


"We Desperately Tried to Convince the Rest..."

by SunderedAndUndone



Series: The Dialogues [4]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Confrontations, Exile, Family Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 60,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunderedAndUndone/pseuds/SunderedAndUndone
Summary: In which UrGoh the Wanderer brings entirely the wrong company home for dinner, and Mystics remember what not being calm feels like. *Roughly* Day 100 in the Dialogues of SkekGra & UrGoh?
Relationships: skekGra & urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Dialogues [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616017
Comments: 113
Kudos: 47





	1. Fine (Not Fine)

**Author's Note:**

> [NB – You may notice that the UrRu are NOT living in the Valley of the Mystics at this point in my timeline. This is deliberate. The only hint I’ll give about it is UrGoh’s line in Season 1 Episode 7: “The other Mystics _went into hiding_ …” :-) ]
> 
> [ETA: Was putting this on Day 90, but realized I needed a FEW more days stuck in there. Wish I knew exactly how many days an unum is! I'm assuming 30-ish.]

“Not even the one knife?”

“No.”

“The littlest one?”

“No.”

“But what if I need to…cut something? Don’t look at me like that! I mean like a rope or a branch! Or if a beast attacks us! That’s happened!”

“The second…brother…is in its zenith.”

“Yeah, I can see it, it’s a big ball of fire in the sky.”

“We will reach…the place…bef—”

“Before it sets, yes, good. Before it sets, right? Fine, I believe you, but so what?”

“—before…it sets.”

_“Nyerrgghhh!”_

“And none there…will harm you.”

“I’m not worried about _them_ , slowcoach! Or about me!”

UrGoh the Wanderer turned their snout up and fixed their Skeksis companion with a lopsided, distinctly skeptical gaze.

SkekGra’s feathers prickled. “Well, not in that way!” they scoffed. “Maybe in every other way, but I don’t expect them to be lying in wait with an ambush. I just want something to keep you and me safe _between_ here and there. First you make me leave my armor back with the Archer. And I trust them, I’m not saying I don’t—”

The Wanderer shifted and leaned at a heavy angle on their staff, a gesture that SkekGra now recognized as “exasperation,” or as close to it as a Mystic ever got—the equivalent of a Gelfling or Podling tightly crossing their arms. UrGoh did tend to use it a lot with their dark half.

“None…bear arms…into this place.”

“And especially not me, I’m sure. Yes, I understand.”

“And _you_ …are the Seeker now…not the Conqueror,” the UrRu reminded SkekGra sternly. “You must learn…to be less safe. Now is…a good time…to begin. We can retrieve the supplies…when we leave.”

“I’ve had these for over two hundred trine,” lamented SkekGra. “They’re laminated with rose-sun metal. Look at that chasing. Fine, fine.” Not without a forlorn glance, they gently tossed the sheathed set of blades down into the little cache-hole they’d created, camouflaged in the roots of a century tree. Then the two of them wrapped up the top of the oilcloth bundle and covered it with dirt and leaves swept in by their tails, followed by some rocks for good measure.

The Seeker now felt almost entirely naked, which may have been spiritually appropriate to their new title, but was hardly going to help them relax in a situation that already set their beak grindingly on edge.

UrGoh had started to read SkekGra’s mind on a regular basis, or so it seemed; anyway, they reached out and patted the side of the Skeksis’ thigh encouragingly. “You are fine,” they said.

“I am _not_ fine. But I don’t need to be, let’s just do this.”

“No,” the Wanderer corrected. “I mean, you…are…fine.”

“All right, whatever that means—”

“Whether…they agree…or not.” A brief smile, a brief squeeze of warm Mystic fingers on the Seeker’s rather clammy talons, and the UrRu was shuffling ahead to lead them on to this mysterious village.

SkekGra reflected that they’d certainly said little nonsense things like that to their lieutenants and captains on occasion, especially to buck them up before a chancy battle; but they couldn’t remotely recall anyone ever saying such a thing to _them_. —Was that right? In hundreds of trine, not once, not even the Emperor? No, they didn’t think so. No one until UrGoh.

It was nonsense, of course—it was only to make them _feel_ better. But they did…feel a bit better.

* * *

“Wait. Where did those come from? There wasn’t anything on the other side of the creek a moment ago.”

“The standing stones?” The Wanderer nodded in the direction of the far shore as they and the Seeker heaved on the pulley-rope that moved the ferry platform across the sluggish, weed-choked and slightly red-tinted water. They’d just passed the halfway mark, which was good because the platform was old, half rotten, and clearly built for smaller and lighter beings. “They…were there. _You_ were not.”

“Oh, don’t give me your sorcerer act. Now I remember how things like this used to work. Sort of. The oval pillars scatter the light of the suns or moons into a moiré, right? And then the dolmen tablet there reads out what people are supposed to see instead—in this case, I assume, just more forest. Until you get up close enough that the lattice won’t resolve anymore. It’s not _that_ fancy.”

UrGoh smirked just a bit. “Fancy enough…that _your_ kind…have never mapped it.”

“Well! Until today.” The Skeksis was taking things in easy good humor, but they saw a shadow steal across their counterpart’s eyes at that. They pretended not to notice. “So do you, ah, you think we’re spotted yet?”

“Perhaps.”

“Right. Manners!”

The Wanderer didn’t answer. SkekGra went back to hauling, although it wasn’t long before their tolerance for awkward silences was exceeded and they added softly: “I’m serious, you know. I won’t. That is, I will…” They tried to think of a more elegant word, but nothing came. “…behave.”

“I know,” said UrGoh.

“This means as much to me as it does to you. To—us.”

“Yes, I know,” the UrRu repeated. It was not a tone to inspire confidence, but the Seeker wasn’t sure whether it was them their light half mistrusted, or something else, and so they fell quiet, trying to ignore the added weight in the pit of their stomach.

They stepped off the jetty onto a bank covered in pale gravel, a tendril of which swept in a curved line away from the water and became an uphill trail through the standing stones. The path then wound round and round the oval pillars in a ridiculously looped, recursive pattern—making it four or five times longer a walk than it would have been in a straight line, if not more. But UrGoh kept to it faithfully, at a measured but unhurried pace, taking not one shortcut; and SkekGra assumed there must be either a scientific or traditional reason for that, so they followed obediently in their UrRu’s wake. A cool mist seemed to rise and (thankfully) fall as they traced the Mystic knot and enacted…whatever in Grot its purpose was.

The Seeker found themselves really, _really_ wishing they had even a staff. A staff would have been an excellent idea. Staves were clearly fair game for Mystics, after all, so UrGoh might have allowed it. How idiotic of them not to have thought of it in advance. They wished they had thicker robes on as well, to feel warmer and less naked. Not Skeksis court robes—Thra no, not those things—but just something more…civilized. Their fighting skirts and shawl felt like plenty, indeed felt rather magnificent when they also had their armor and weapons on, but not now. Now they felt like some barbarian chieftain being called to bend the knee at the Castle.

A barbarian chieftain such as the Conqueror had often _sent_ to the Castle to bend the knee.

There was no Castle ahead here, however. Instead, they crested the rise and approached the edge of a wide glade, not all that visibly different from the one that housed Stone-in-the-Wood many leagues away. Only instead of platforms snaking among the treetops and little houses carved out of the boles or nestled under enormous rills of fungus, SkekGra could see what looked like irregular longhouses of carved river rock with turf rooftops of green and brown and blue. (And as always with the blasted Mystics, spirals in the rock carvings, dizzying spirals everywhere.) They could also make out a central fountain—what looked like a small natural artesian well, which had been coaxed by both physical and metaphysical stonecraft into a spray that leapt up and fell down into a deep bowl on one side, and a downward-sloping stream running through a series of flatter basins that looked to be for laundry or bathing on the other side.

But getting a better look would require getting through the pair of Mystics that approached SkekGra and UrGoh now, their long bodies plowing sleekly through the fine grass and underbrush, their heavy staves swinging rhythmically like upside-down pendulums. SkekGra looked sidewise at the Wanderer, hoping to get a quick gauge of what they thought so far. UrGoh kept their face turned stoically toward the village, although the Seeker saw the UrRu’s coat undulate as they took a slow, full-torso breath (slow even for them!) in and out.

SkekGra _had_ thought to ask in advance for some counsel on how to carry themselves for the meeting. Whether they should be dignified and quiet, or subdued and quiet, or some sort of exactly-in-between and quiet. How far away from acceptable the genial if slightly excitable manner they now so easily fell into using with UrGoh was. UrGoh hadn’t had much to say on the subject. There’d been a lot of shrugging. The Seeker came away with a depressing suspicion that that their light half doubted the Skeksis would have much power over the course of events either way.

UrGoh broke away from SkekGra slightly as the two other UrRu arrived; SkekGra assumed that they would have been collected with a glance had they been meant to come along, so they hung back for the moment, letting the Wanderer conduct affairs. UrGoh silently reached out towards first one, then the other of their kind, and was received in both cases with what looked like somber kindness. There was much cupping of hands and intertwining of fingers, some front-arm hugs, pats and little strokes on the neck-mane, and a brief rubbing of cheek against cheek. At one point they were all three holding hands.

“The Wanderer returns,” intoned one of the Mystics. They did not look at SkekGra. The Skeksis had the distinct feeling UrGoh was studiously being greeted in exactly the same way as if they’d come alone.

“I am home at last,” UrGoh said. “UrMa, UrIm. Be well.”

“Be well, UrGoh,” answered the second one, UrIm. There was a hint of wry smile playing about their lips. What did that mean? Bah—here the Seeker was, feverishly parsing every expression and tone of voice, and not coming up with much of help at all. Even telling these grass-grazers apart and getting their names right would be a challenge. Blasted inscrutable Mystics. Whose Mystics _were_ these anyway, or did that matter?

“You have managed to confound our Numerologist, a little,” the first one, UrMa, remarked. “There were clear enough portents of your coming in the birds and the wind, but…the transpositions they performed on those charts had certain other results that…refused to factor out.”

Now their eyes _did_ travel to the Skeksis standing behind UrGoh.

The Wanderer didn’t look around. “Was there…anything else…UrYod discerned?” they asked. And then, so quietly that SkekGra had to strain to hear: “Anything…I should know now?”

UrMa, who had a voice noticeably higher than UrGoh’s (more a flute’s middle register than a viol’s lowest sonorities) shook their head minutely. “You may have wandered off the chart this time, my friend.”

“So be it,” murmured UrGoh.

UrIm gave one of those little hums the UrRu often made. “Do you mean to…?”

UrGoh bent their neck back in their counterpart’s direction. “Come,” they beckoned.

* * *

The Skeksis slowly stepped forward, still feeling rather like that barbarian. If they could at least manage to be a _noble_ savage, and not let down this strange twin of theirs whose inner splendors had just begun to unfold before them. It was shocking how quickly that had assumed more importance than nearly anything else.

They gave what they thought was a relatively simple yet respectful courtesy, bowing from the knees and waist with only a couple looping waves of their taloned hand, bound locks of hair falling forward from their shoulders with a tiny clacking of beads. The Wanderer nodded and said, “My kin, I present and ask hospitality for…SkekGra the Seeker…shard of GraGoh that was…and…who yet shares that soul…with me.”

From the uncertain folding of the other UrRu’s brows and the way they looked at each other, this was hardly a normal formula of introduction, but then it was hardly a normal introduction. UrGoh was formally reminding them of who the Skeksis were, doubtless with good reason.

“That is not the name we had heard for this—shard,” said UrMa at last.

“Names…sometimes change,” UrGoh admonished gently. “Do they not?”

A deliberative side-to-side swaying of the head, but the point wasn’t very arguable. “That is true…” the other Mystic conceded.

“The other name is put aside…now and forever.” The Wanderer glanced over at SkekGra, who was still doing fine—they’d certainly had to remain in this half-crouch for much longer periods before the Emperor, and knew how to subtly use their tail to keep braced and balanced. “We come unarmed…and in goodwill.”

The Seeker declined for the sake of the solemn occasion to picture UrGoh any other way _but_ unarmed and full of goodwill. Meanwhile, the other Mystics gracefully lowered their necks, each laying a hand on their left breast.

“SkekGra,” the Wanderer went on, gesturing at them in turn, “this is UrIm…our Healer…my good friend.”

“An honor,” SkekGra said, striving to make their raucous voice as smooth as they could without becoming inaudible.

“You honor us,” replied the Healer. “Be well.”

“And this is UrMa…” The Wanderer paused and looked at UrMa.

“Who is no one in particular,” that UrRu supplied mildly.

UrGoh emitted a soft _whuff_. “That is true…only of no one. This is UrMa…also my good friend…who was once called the Peacemaker.”

The Seeker had by now gathered that this was what went for affectionate banter among UrRu, and allowed themselves a slight questioning cock of the head. “An honor. And possibly a relief…”

Too much. _Oh_ don’t _get comfortable, whatever you do,_ SkekGra immediately berated themselves. UrMa sent UrGoh the briefest of unappreciative looks (as though they’d been rather hoping the Wanderer wouldn’t bring it up, and UrGoh had missed the cue), but then gave the Skeksis another polite half-bow. “You flatter me, but—I fear I’m out of practice with diplomacy. We do not fight among ourselves, and few from the outside seek us out now. And it will not be needed,” they added with something that was almost haste. “The peace between our kinds is an ancient and…quite sensible one.”

“It is both,” SkekGra agreed.

“No chart is necessary to see…we have some catching up to do,” UrIm mercifully interceded. “Both of you must have—walked? Yes, walked a long way. Come, sit, be welcome. UrAmaj is cooking.” They and UrMa turned and headed back toward the village.

Dinner? The Skeksis couldn’t help an inquisitive quiver of the nare at that. Definitely there was cooking somewhere, but the smell was so _faint_. Never mind; getting any hopes up on that score would be both foolish and unhelpful to the cause. Better to resign themselves to an unsatisfied belly now, and accept a pleasant surprise if it came.

UrGoh’s dark gentle face craned up towards SkekGra’s, amber eyes shining in the dimming sunlight. The Seeker could read trepidation there. The UrRu’s hand reached up too—seeming for once to seek comfort, rather than offer it.

They were going among the Wanderer’s people, SkekGra reminded themselves. The only people UrGoh had ever had, and those people were so few…few as the Skeksis, as a matter of fact. The Seeker still didn’t even want to think about how in Grot they’d ever persuade _those_ stubborn lizards at the Castle to listen to their vision, but for now they didn’t have to. It was almost thankfully moot. This seemingly lesser, yet oddly looming obstacle had to be hurdled first. If the two of them could surmount it, that would gain them allies and a basis to press forward on, even if it took many trine. If they couldn’t…then none of the rest would matter.

But for a moment that seemed almost beside the point. It suddenly came to SkekGra that they did _not_ want to see UrGoh have to choose between one Thra-forsaken Skeksis, and their fellow Mystics. That would be…terrible. And terribly unjust.

And all too possible.

SkekGra took UrGoh’s outstretched hand—with initial care of their talons, as always, and then a firm steady grasp.

“Hand in hand,” they half-whispered. It was all they could think of to say in present company. The smile they got back was rather sickly, but far better that than none at all.

“Side…by side,” returned UrGoh.

And so resolved, that was how they walked as they followed UrMa and UrIm into the Mystic village.


	2. Wavelengths (and Constructive Interference)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mystics are more addled than they've been in many a trine -- and UrTih, for perhaps the first time in their life, receives Too Much Information.

The Wanderer was fairly sure they could have brought a Crystal Skimmer or a herd of Mounders into the village to less general consternation. But at least their fellow Mystics were as kind and mild a people as ever, so the consternation was mostly in wary little checks over the shoulder, and here and there a kind of liquid lost look in the eyes.

It was probably still too much to hope that SkekGra remained blissfully ignorant of the mood. For someone with such a brash heedless air, they paid surprisingly close attention to things. Even if they didn’t pick up the tension from the other Mystics, they would easily sense UrGoh’s own response to it.

UrSu and UrAmaj hadn’t made their appearance yet, and reportedly wouldn’t until dinner. And UrMa and UrIm soon excused themselves to withdraw for what they said would be a brief talk. Every other Mystic in residence had emerged, however, to welcome their Wanderer home and at least perform the functions of a welcome for the newcomer. Long low stones that served as benches were persuaded by UrSol’s and UrZah’s rich voices to roll away from their usual spots up against the longhouses into a triangular arrangement in the village center.

No fire was lit, though it was already growing cool and a trifle damp. The Mystic way was never to destroy unnecessarily, and a chill in the fingers and nose didn’t constitute necessity. Besides, a hot meal was coming. UrGoh stopped themselves from asking to borrow a shawl for their thin and slightly underdressed counterpart. But they could see the Skeksis consciously mustering their old campaigner’s imperviousness to the elements…which had the side effect of bringing them into a somewhat more martial posture than they may have realized.

They did, however, spare themselves the smoke from UrGoh’s pipe—which UrNol very generously filled with some of their rarest stores—by sitting pointedly upwind of it on UrGoh’s left.

In all other ways, the gathering felt cozy enough. The UrRu had arranged themselves in the same companionable way they’d done in days long past as they listened to a story from UrGoh, or UrLii, or any of the other Mystics who roamed abroad and returned with tales. Home was still home, despite all else that had changed so starkly in recent unum.

The Wanderer took a long, delicious drag on their pipe and let some of their tension drift out smoothly on the exhale.

“Over three unum, you say?” UrZah was repeating. “And together the whole time?”

“Yes, with only…a few days’ exception,” UrGoh answered the Ritual-Guardian. “We two have walked…one road…ever since. And Thra grant…that can continue.”

A discreetly dubious collective glance went to the Skeksis sitting beside UrGoh. The Wanderer was _positive_ they were hearing bits of the acerbic mental commentary going through their twin shard’s head now—or at least making a wonderful guess at it. But outwardly, the Seeker just gave a small nod.

“It is remarkable,” admitted UrZah. “I would think it a very difficult feat.”

“It was at first.” The Wanderer smiled crookedly. “The differences between us…are great. I wasn’t sure…it would be possible. Neither was the Seeker. We both said so, frequently. But we felt obligated…to try. And now…I’m grateful we did.”

“Remarkable, also,” UrTih put in, “to have a simultaneous vision in the first place. I’ve never heard of such a thing occurring, among us at least. With Gelfling, once in a great while, but after all they have the dreamfasting. I certainly don’t think it’s ever happened between Mystic and Skeksis. Though, to be rigorous, it might only seem that way because we’ve never…compared notes.”

“Let’s leave that aside for now,” suggested the Ritual-Guardian. “We should not discuss the vision until the Master and the others can join us.”

The Alchemist acceded with a hum. “As you say. There’s no shortage of things to discuss.” They turned toward SkekGra. “You have been the Conqueror for so many trine, and by all reports gloried in that—title. Now, suddenly, you call yourself the Seeker, and are telling us the days of war are completely behind you. May I inquire…what happened?”

The Seeker threw UrGoh a look that clearly said _Here we go_ , but this at least was an expected and long-discussed question.

“This happened,” they replied simply. “That is, making war just isn’t compatible with…any of this. With being with UrGoh, with seeking unity for our soul. I had to choose, and I’ve chosen.”

UrTih’s gaze sharpened a little. “Yes, but is it only for the sake of your light half? Must they constantly be watching? Would you go back to your old life, if they weren’t there?”

“…No? Of course not.”

“And why ‘of course’ not?”

“Because…well, honestly, it’s not a question that even makes sense now.” This was a novel way for the Seeker to put it, one the Wanderer hadn’t heard from them yet in all their deliberations together, but they immediately liked it better than what they’d decided to say beforehand. “There’s no such thing as…UrGoh not being here anymore. They’re always with me. I hear them, I see them, I know what they would say.”

“Fascinating,” murmured the Alchemist.

“It still troubles me,” said UrZah, elevating their neck to scrutinize the Skeksis from a bit further up. Many of the other Mystics nodded their agreement. “Do you have no conception, on your _own_ , of _why_ causing bloodshed and suffering are an evil, why we shudder at your deeds?”

SkekGra did look a bit besieged at that, and they sought UrGoh’s eyes for reassurance. UrGoh gave it warmly, along with the faintest little nudging gesture of their snout. They both knew a true answer here carried risks. Yet the Wanderer had very strictly warned their dark half _never_ to lie to the UrRu. Even the Conqueror probably couldn’t have done it successfully anyway, and the Seeker must not.

“More than before,” SkekGra answered at last. “I admit I still have—questions about some things. But UrGoh’s helping me…sift through them.”

“And again, it’s with UrGoh’s help,” returned UrZah heavily.

“Yeah, but—why is that wrong?” There were few contexts in which meekness came naturally to Skeksis, but apparently Mystics were actually somewhat intimidating on the moral front. SkekGra looked around perplexedly at the wrinkled faces studying them. “Isn’t that…how it’s meant to be? Isn’t that how it works for normal—I mean, for the other peoples of Thra, the ones who aren’t just halves? Surely we’re all changed at least a little by…who we spend our time with. And aren’t we _supposed_ to care what they think, what would happen to them if we did this or that—don’t you call that virtue, the virtue you say Skeksis lack?”

No one had an immediate counterargument to make to this. UrGoh couldn’t help exuding a small, pleased puff of fragrant smoke.

“I will be very interested to contemplate that,” remarked the Alchemist thoughtfully after a moment. “My thanks, for the new grist to grind with.” It was a phrase UrTih used often enough with all the other Mystics when they didn’t quite agree, and intended to thoroughly enjoy not quite agreeing—but the Ritual-Guardian still sent them a warning look that they evidently didn’t catch.

“You know not what you have wrought,” UrSol the Chanter informed SkekGra with a half-smile. “When the Alchemist gets hold of grist, they grind _very_ thoroughly.”

The Seeker blinked, clearly unsure it was a joke. “Well. That’s—all right, it’s—there _to_ be ground, isn’t it, UrGoh?”

“Of course,” said the Wanderer.

“You see, my kin,” nodded UrTih. “What our Wanderer and their other half bring us is far too important _not_ to question, and they agree that it is.”

“It’s the most important thing…I’ve ever done,” UrGoh amplified. “I’ll…wait to explain why…until after dinner. But SkekGra and I wouldn’t have come, especially…together…if we didn’t mean to answer…all you would put to us.”

“What you invite, you will receive in full,” UrSol assured them.

Again, UrZah tried with a stern face to signal how poor a time this was for the relatively capricious among the UrRu to indulge those tendencies. UrGoh felt slightly sorry for all of them.

“And what do you invite, Chanter?” snuffled the Alchemist, though their answering glance was a good-humored one. “But we should return to our examination. Seeker, you seem resolved. But what about the other Skeksis? I can’t fathom the Empire taking the loss of your martial skills lightly. They must have opinions about this—recalibration.”

“Not yet,” said the Seeker dryly, “because we haven’t told them yet. But they will."

“Might they not disagree _violently_?”

“I’ve risked life and limb for much worse reasons. I…I owe this to Thra.”

“Yet that risks the Wanderer as well, the one you desire to walk one road with forever. And they’re innocent of your crimes.”

“Not entirely,” UrGoh interjected quietly.

“UrGoh is braver than you may know.” SkekGra managed to stop short of outright affront; their feathery brows did contract, however. “They’re no warrior, but they’ve risked their life for something beyond themselves before.”

The Wanderer regretted but couldn’t help some heat rising to their face at that. They were touched by their counterpart’s words, that was part of it. The other part was shame. Although the Master was thankfully not here yet, _everyone_ knew what they would have said, and the subject was bound to come up again. That was why the others exchanged uneasy looks.

 _Don’t interfere. It is not the Mystic way. It is not our place. We are not of Thra. Our arrogance has done enough._ And UrGoh had interfered…before? As in…more than once?

The Seeker met those looks with confusion and the possible beginnings of annoyance. They probably thought the UrRu doubted UrGoh’s courage.

“Have they?” The Alchemist mused, seeming to debate whether they wanted to press this point any further. As was surely foreordained, they did. “And was this due to—your influence, Seeker?”

“ _My_ influence?”

“You yourself made the point that we influence those we’re with, that their voices stay with us even when they’re gone. UrGoh has been with you, ergo, you have been with UrGoh.”

“We are one, but if you’re worried that UrGoh’s about to go marauding for the…nonexistent UrRu empire, that’s—not something they’ll ever do,” demurred SkekGra. “And I wouldn’t want them to. Why would I? I’m giving it up myself.”

“I am merely trying to clarify your reasoning,” UrTih said imperturbably. The Skeksis goggled. UrGoh dearly hoped SkekGra didn’t believe their intellect had just been disparaged, but given that they were wondering about that themselves, it might be a vain hope.

“—Sorry, what?” In their astonishment, the Seeker almost chirruped it.

“You seem to be claiming a certain psychic…porosity between a Skeksis and their Mystic counterpart, but you acknowledge a flow only in one direction. That could be possible, but begs explanation, and you’ve just asservated that you will not tax our credulity.”

SkekGra’s eyes widened even further.

“What is it?” asked UrTih—their manner amiable as ever, but their curiosity plainly even more piqued.

“Nothing,” SkekGra protested, belatedly stealing a guilty glance at UrGoh.

“Something, I think,” the Alchemist insisted with a faint smile. The Seeker looked completely at a loss.

 _I did tell SkekGra not to lie to UrRu,_ thought UrGoh regretfully, _but I wasn’t accounting for the Alchemist and their utter inability to leave a loose end alone._

This was, of course, why not responding at all was always a conversational option among the Mystics, and not considered rude. The Wanderer had long ago learned it was the opposite among Gelfling and Podlings: they’d far rather be answered with what they called a “fib,” however transparent, than be “ignored.” UrGoh had no idea how it was with Skeksis—beyond a strong impression that lies were generally more expected, and mostly shrugged off. Certainly SkekGra always assumed at least one person in any given room was lying. And UrGoh now knew that one of the things Skeksis liked _least_ in the world was being “ignored.”

At length, SkekGra cleared their throat (always an exercise in futility) and forced themselves to reply.

“I beg pardon. Didn’t mean to stare. I know—I just realized, _I know who you are_.”

* * *

The Alchemist blinked slowly, taken aback. “Yes?”

Then something seemed to begin clicking together in their mind, and their face fell a little even as SkekGra continued explaining.

“You’re the Scientist, SkekTek. I know them well. They’ve re-set my broken bones, nothing at the Castle would work without them, our carriages, the war-machines, nothing. And they always look at me _just_ like that when they don’t believe me either. I know you.”

The Skeksis was trying to keep a lid down tight on it for the sake of company, but UrGoh could see in their eyes the blossoming awe and pleasure this revelation had produced. “Or—I know the _other_ you, the other half of you, and now I’ve met you, I’ve met the whole you. You are UrTih, and if SkekTek is your…your counterpart, then you must have been— _TekTih_. And I knew TekTih too,” they finished in something far too close to triumph.

The name hung in the air above them, reverberating through all the village like one of UrZah’s ritual chimes. Even the low mumbles from UrMa and UrIm, still conversing in UrIm’s doorway, fell silent as the overtones doubled, quadrupled, folded on top of each other, flattened, and at last dispersed.

Poor UrTih was sitting there entirely agape.

“I think that must be right, mustn’t it, UrGoh?” The Seeker turned to the Wanderer for confirmation. UrGoh found themselves nodding along dazedly as sun-brilliant images of the ancient past rapidly leapt into their brain, matching everything SkekGra went on to recount.

“Yes, TekTih, I remember now, they always said they’d rather _like_ to know what having flesh was like, if they could just try it out temporarily. They’d be able to do all kinds of studies on themselves without violating ethics. Well. Bit of a bright side there then, I suppose?” They gave the Alchemist a knowing, almost fond look.

Then they frowned. “That would explain some things, actually.”

UrTih’s right-front hand wandered up to somewhere under their neck-mane, resting there for the briefest moment. They nodded and managed faintly, “I—I believe you are recalling that correctly.”

“Sometimes they just come like that now, all in a flash,” the Seeker said.

“I had them…occasionally…before this,” added UrGoh, electing not to add that it generally happened after they’d smoked too much leaf. “But since…we’ve come together…much more. We are already regaining…some of what was lost…even though it’s not…the true unity.”

There was another silence, into which a very familiar voice, deep but hoarse, obtruded. “Forgive…the delay.”

All heads rose up on their stalks, like a row of reeds caught by the wind. UrSu the Master made their deliberate way over to the gathering, their long ragged hair swaying with their steps. UrAmaj was not with them, but UrMa and UrIm had fallen in behind their leader to join the rest.

SkekGra got up at once, court training instinctively coming into play. UrGoh did as well, though more slowly, and with a heart that seemed to be turning like a weathervane, buffeted by inconsistent emotions. Respect, love for a Master they sorely missed after so many trine apart, that was normal and familiar—but why this fear as well? They couldn’t remember a time in all their days on Thra when they hadn’t wished to please UrSu; yet surely that was a strange egoistic thing to be _afraid_ about. And what exactly was feared? When had UrSu ever hurt them, even in their occasional moments of disappointment? Was UrGoh just feeling SkekGra’s nerves?

No, that wasn’t all of it. They, themselves, were afraid of how their other half would be received here. And though the times they’d ever taken something personally on their own account were vanishingly few, apparently it was another matter when it came to SkekGra.

The rest didn’t get up, as that was not necessary among Mystics, but there were murmurs all round of “Master” and “Be well.” UrGoh shuffled over to UrSu, who transferred their tall staff to their hind hand so they could offer a hug. Necks and arms wove past each other, and the Master’s embrace was close and strong and filled with love. UrGoh let out a long sigh.

“Welcome, and be well,” the Master said.

“I’ve…missed you, Master,” said UrGoh, surprising the both of them a little, but then UrSu patted UrGoh’s shoulder.

“And we have all missed you. It will be good to hear your voice in the village again.”

The Master released the Wanderer and moved to get a better look at their guest, who was standing patiently watching the pair of them, their head tilted at a curious and—appreciative sort of angle?

It made more sense to the Wanderer after a moment. After all, it was highly unlikely their counterpart ever got such a greeting when they returned to the Castle, especially from _their_ master.

“Master.” UrGoh gestured at the Skeksis. “This is…SkekGra the Seeker…shard of GraGoh that was.”

“‘And who yet shares that soul with you,’” UrSu smiled. “Yes, so I hear.”

UrGoh took their dark half’s hand and brought them further forward. UrSu noted the contact but said nothing of it. “SkekGra, this is our Master UrSu.”

“An honor, Master UrSu.” The Seeker bowed. “Thank you for receiving me so kindly.”

UrSu inclined from the shoulders, with an elegance belied by their eternally-disheveled clothes and hair. “Be well and be welcome, Seeker. What is it you seek here?”

“The other halves of the souls of my, ah…my kin,” replied SkekGra.

“That is well, but also now accomplished,” the Master commented. “Anything else…? Do you bring some message from—the Empire?” They pronounced _the Empire_ with a certain delicacy, as though they were referring to some quaint foreign custom and not entirely sure they’d gotten it right.

“Not at all. I didn’t tell them I was coming here. Nor do I plan to.”

“Neither of those were the answers I expected,” UrSu rumbled meditatively. “And I will confess, these are not fates that chose to reveal themselves in advance. You may find us less—ready than we would usually wish. I hope we can be of good use to your purpose, once we know what it is. But first, we tend to humbler needs.” They began to turn away.

 _“This is_ our _purpose, Master UrSu.”_

UrSu turned back in shock to find the Wanderer and the Seeker looking at each other in startlement, still holding hands, and the rest of the Mystics frozen like statues of themselves. UrSol’s mouth had frankly dropped open. Their hearing was the keenest of all the UrRu; they could discern a hundred component waves within any note of music, and the notes they sang carried frequencies no other being on Thra could reach, and that only the elements themselves understood. What they had heard just now, they alone knew.

But everyone else had heard UrGoh’s and SkekGra’s voices speak in perfect unison despite their extreme differences of tone and pitch—one smooth and low, one high and scratchy—and beyond that, the combined sound was more than the sum of its parts. A third pitch was produced in the intersection, neither high nor low but on some entirely different spectrum, and it made even the skin of wizards shiver, and the hair stand on end.

It also made the Master peer up a little uncertainly at UrGoh’s face, then the Skeksis’, as though they were searching for something (or someone). From the way they lowered their head again, they didn’t find it. But they took their staff in their front hand again, and with the other they beckoned toward one of the longhouses, where the long-lost UrAmaj stood at last—visibly hesitating, despite the huge pot they carried that required all four arms to heft.

“So I hear,” said UrSu. “But we…should probably still eat.”


	3. Thin Gruel (Dark Red)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which biology regrettably _is_ destiny, and Detective UrGoh has a very disturbing hunch.

It wouldn’t be true to say the Seeker hadn’t thought at _all_ about whether there might be any difficulty with UrRu food. It had occurred to them once or twice, but then they’d put it right back out of their mind, because there was almost no point worrying about it.

After all, what was to be done? They owned only one set of Skeksis finger-cutlery, though it was a fine bejeweled one, and it was back with their army halfway downriver, in a large chest of ornaments and regalia that they kept for state occasions where they needed to cut a more majestic than martial figure. (The Gelfling, along with a few of Thra’s other cultures, had both dainty sensibilities and hopelessly tiny tableware, which was not remotely fair but there you had it.) Otherwise, SkekGra spurned such fripperies. Possibly because the only Skeksis who routinely used utensils were the Ritual-Master and the Ornamentalist, who the Conqueror found almost too precious and priggish to tolerate.

And all the rest of the time they were with their troops, who were Gelfling yes, but also a little world unto themselves—a world in which the rules were rather different, and the Conqueror was exemplar and taste-maker. Over the trine officers and enlisted had gotten to practically _competing_ with each other to mimic their notorious master, by being gluttonous whenever spare food was to be had, and messy whether it was or not.

As for UrGoh, while in the early days of their journey SkekGra had perversely delighted in putting the Mystic off their miserable feed, the two of them had now reached an understanding, wherein the former would contain the carnage to their personal space and the latter would keep practicing getting used to it. Skeksis knew perfectly well what everyone else in the world thought of what and how they ate, but the nice thing about having an Empire now was that far fewer people felt at liberty to comment on it, at least in Skeksis hearing.

There _were_ a few tricks one could use in a pinch, when one had cause to. If there were any breads or baked tubers that could be hollowed out, one could make a nicely flexible impromptu scoop out of that. With good positioning of a decent-sized bowl, one could use one’s long Skeksis tongue to maneuver certain kinds of food in without having to show everyone the details. Some food could be wrapped up in other food, or even parchment or paper. One fortunate thing for any Skeksis who traveled a lot was that there was very little on Thra they couldn’t eat without fear, up to and including stones—indeed, swallowing a few small stones often helped with a bout of indigestion—and their stomachs were undefeatable. Even something that tasted vile on the tongue would usually stay put and behave itself once it was all the way down.

So the Seeker simply assumed they’d improvise as best they could, and trust to the Thra that had _personally asked all this of them in the first place_ for the rest. There were enough other things to be anxious about that they had much more control over.

Or so they’d told themselves, before they _saw_ dinner.

First off, there were no breads. Or tubers. Or even gourds. SkekGra kept waiting for them to show up, like they did in nearly every other inhabited settlement from here to the Claw Mountains, and they never arrived. No noodles either. The Seeker had been ready to do without meat, but this was something else again, and raised a serious question of whether Mystics ate _anything_ that filled the belly for more than an hour. Maybe they just sat around hungry a lot, and didn’t care? For washing things down, there was only water—though at least it was cool, clear, and in semi-manageable cups. (UrRu snouts were put together very differently from Skeksis beaks, but their jaws were still long from front to back and narrow across, and while they had lips, those were thin and barely worth dignifying with the name; so they too had to be careful of making their drinking vessels too wide.)

UrAmaj and UrNol sat together at one end of the triangle of bench-stones, assembling the first of two courses and passing it around: broad dark-green leaves rolled up and filled with what smelled like some kind of nut-and-berry chutney. Each Mystic took one and proceeded to pull slow modest bites off it with a slight sidewise grinding of their blunt little grass-grazer teeth.

Meanwhile a complete and (to the Seeker’s ears) tomb-like silence descended, then stretched out and out. Was something wrong? Were the UrRu that reluctant to discuss their affairs in front of a Skeksis, or even make small talk with one…?

SkekGra dispatched the query to their other half in the form of a confused look. UrGoh swallowed a bite of their roll, then turned to them with a slightly rueful smile.

“Ah. Please understand. We eat”—here the Wanderer canted their neck to the right—“and we talk”—canting it to the left—“but we do not eat _and_ talk. With us…it’s one thing at a time…and giving that thing…complete mindfulness.”

“Oh, I see. Probably—wise.” Somehow the whole business made them want to whisper, but that seemed truly silly. They turned their attention to a plan of attack for their roll of bird feed.

They gamely tried the Mystic method first. Not a chance: the blasted leaf was too tough and fibrous for their gaping serrated rows of teeth to do much with it. They briefly tried clamping their jaw down on it and twisting with their hand to help tear it, but that seemed more likely to end in a spray of colorful debris than anything else, especially given how the UrRu were now looking on a bit like spectators at a tightrope performance. Finally SkekGra tried unfolding one end of the roll and getting the contents, at least, to slide downhill into their mouth, but the chutney was like glue. Even shaking and tapping it a little wouldn’t persuade it to cooperate.

So there was nothing else for it but to just drop the whole thing straight down the gullet, tipping their head back so gravity would keep the sand-dry leaf from sticking to their tongue.

When they lowered their head again, everyone was carefully looking elsewhere except for UrAmaj and UrNol, who exchanged a strategizing glance and then began making another roll. The Seeker stifled a noise of dismay. At the relative speeds here and especially if there was really going to be _no_ conversation _whatsoever_ , they’d have a half-dozen of these things put away before the others finished one. Which they could certainly do, that wasn’t the trouble—but they really had been resolved to eat neither more nor less than exactly what they were given, so as not to risk embarrassing UrGoh, or insulting or disgusting their monkish hosts. At what point was it acceptable to claim to be full? Did even that count as a “lie?” Mystics!

It wound up being eight. SkekGra kept trying to read some kind of cue about when to stop in UrGoh’s expression (oh, to be united enough to _really_ telepathize just this once), but nothing came except a hint of a frown that settled on the UrRu’s kindly brow and stayed there unchanging.

The Seeker comforted themselves that at least if they did succeed here, there shouldn’t be any such fuss about UrGoh at a Skeksis dinner…at least not from the Skeksis end. The Castle’s groaning banquet tables would have plenty even for a herbivore, and while they’d no doubt mock the Wanderer’s diet, they’d be loudly insulting everything else about them too—and it’d be sheer bullying for bullying’s sake, more than any genuine revulsion. If anything, the danger was more the opposite: Skeksis feeling quietly judged by disdainful beings who had what no one wanted to admit was a convincing claim to moral superiority. They might lash out about that, just as SkekGra had done at first.

(Many of the Skeksis did say they thought all the other races in Thra repellent and ugly, _especially_ the lumpen Mystics, but the Seeker had never found that terribly convincing. Granted, they themselves spent so much time abroad that they were far more used to looking at non-Skeksis faces than those of their own kind.)

And UrGoh absolutely excelled at shrugging off insults. Now _that_ might truly offend the Skeksis—they were used to far easier prey, including each other; but at least the UrRu’s feelings probably wouldn’t end up too awfully hurt.

Their feelings, if nothing else.

There would be real malice for the Wanderer, at least initially, and that hatred would be physically dangerous. But SkekGra dared hope that if the wretched Conqueror could work through it, so could the rest. If the two of them could only stay in or near the Castle—and in one piece—long enough to get it through the Skeksis’ thick heads that there was no real threat, and nobody was going to _die_ if Mystics and Skeksis just talked to each other. That would suffice for a beginning.

At best it’d be a long road. A blessing that both their kinds aged so slowly.

* * *

The second and last course was…gruel. Literally.

Simmered into such a mush that the Seeker couldn’t tell even with their predator’s nose what all the ingredients had originally been. What bulk was there seemed mostly to be some mealy wholegrain kernel, glasrig perhaps, and there might also have been the liquid remains of merkeep root in there somewhere. There were a couple whispers of aromatic and smoky spice, and some kind of…ground bark powder? that turned the entire thing a dark red and gave it a (very) slight tang. The UrRu ate it with large wooden ladles that had vertically-flat, sort of leaf-shaped handles, beautifully suited to their long fingers. At least SkekGra’s fingers were long as well. Gelfling and Podlings had the most ridiculously stubby hands.

And only two of them, of course.

And no tails. Really, there were ways in which Mystics and Skeksis were more like each other than like the other life on Thra, which only seemed strange until one spent a moment thinking about it. Diet, however, was not one of those ways.

Things began well. SkekGra found they could steer the big spoon-bowl of the ladle around their teeth as long as they went very slowly and opened their lipless maw wide enough. They could barely tell they were eating food at all as opposed to, oh, maybe mounting-paste; but at least it would carry them through the nightmare and besides, everyone else was eating even _more_ slowly. Then to their surprise and pleasure they discovered there _was_ something solid at the bottom of the bowl after all, round things of a dough-like firmness.

Dumplings perhaps? Something with a faint hope of assuaging the hunger? Everything so far had been almost worse than nothing at all, a cruel promise of nourishment that never materialized. These things felt a bit large, but perhaps they could be cut up with the edge of the spoon.

No, they couldn’t. They skated around and almost out of the bowl instead, splashing a bit of the hot slop onto the Skeksis’ lap and leg—which made them start, which spilled a bit more slop. One of UrGoh’s hind hands subtly moved to almost-touch SkekGra’s knee in warning. _Right. I’ve gathered as much, not cuttable. Thank you for the timely news, UrGoh._ Had the others noticed? Stupid question. What else was going on to pay attention to? ‘Mindfulness.’ _Mystics!_

Fine. Then in they went whole, like the bird-feed rolls. What else was to be done? SkekGra scooped one up in the ladle. It made another escape attempt, but the Conqueror’s reflexes were always quick, and they were able to keep it balanced long enough to finish delivery.

“…Wait…” UrGoh began in an urgent grunt, though not quite urgent enough.

The Skeksis tipped the pillowy bundle in, closed their jaws over it, and swallowed. The first thing they learned about it, courtesy of their tongue, was that the outer layer was not dough but something rough and gritty. The second thing they learned, courtesy of their throat, was that the inside of it was scalding. _Scalding._

Coughing and spluttering, they dropped their ladle and instinctively stuck their beak into the bowl to gulp down some of its cooler contents. Which worked—the searing pain quickly started to dwindle—but also got dark-red pulp everywhere, including onto and under their beak, and then on their hand as well as they coughed again.

“Oh for Thra’s sake,” was their momentary squawk of anguish. UrGoh somehow managed to press their soft old pocket-handkerchief into SkekGra’s talons despite their own simultaneous fit of coughing and moaning.

UrAmaj was on the move (or as close as Mystics got to it) as well. “I’ll—get another cloth.”

The Seeker toweled themselves off with no further noise except a stunned mumble of “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” But they couldn’t help a crestfallen peek at UrGoh, who didn’t look _wrathful_ because they never looked wrathful, but hardly seemed overjoyed either.

Dinner for all was curtailed, with no explanation needed or wanted. Mystics lumbered in a line back to the kitchen to hand their bowls over for washing and drying. UrNol collected UrGoh’s and SkekGra’s as well without saying a word.

“It was _burning_ ,” SkekGra whispered helplessly during the brief moment alone.

“Yeah,” answered UrGoh in an undertone, wiping a bit of gruel off their own shirtsleeve. “A steaming center. They release more herbs…over time…and keep…the malt warm…for a couple hours.”

 _“Hours?”_ The whisper grew strangled.

“I tried…to warn you. I just…”

“UrGoh, I’m not fond of this no-talking-at-meals rule. _I_ thought you meant not to try cutting it.”

“No. Once they…cool and…dissolve partway…you can eat them. But you must wait.”

“Well, I certainly won’t forget for—next time. _Thra_ , I’m hungry.”

The Wanderer frowned again, over in the direction of the kitchen longhouse. They seemed about to say something more, but closed their mouth when they saw the Master re-emerging and the others trickling out behind.

UrSu shuffled towards them across the empty space between the benches, staff thudding dully on the dirt.

“Are you all right, Seeker?” the old UrRu asked, with an even more somber air than their usual. “Your…throat?”

“Fine, thanks,” said SkekGra, then grimaced and rubbed their neck as they remembered about not lying. “That is, it hurts a little but…it’ll be fine again soon. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“UrIm,” the Master nodded to the Healer, “please bring a tonic for both of them.”

“Of course, Master.”

“There is time left to the evening to hear about this…vision from Thra, if you still wish,” UrSu went on. “But perhaps you should rest your voices till the morning?”

The Wanderer and the Seeker looked at each other, silently conferring on the merits of starting over with the suns versus staying up to try to end the evening on _any_ other kind of note. Demonstrate UrRu patience—or the world-shaking need of Thra’s call?

“Yes, that would be wiser,” UrGoh decided after a moment. “Thank you, Master.”

“I wouldn’t mind a chance to wash up,” agreed SkekGra, just to let everyone know that was a thing Skeksis did. “I’ve a robe in our bags. Yes, thank you.”

“That is well, then. Sweet sleep to you. We will also bring some extra bedding to your quarters, UrGoh.”

“That won’t…be necessary,” replied the Wanderer, causing another brief general pause in the proceedings. “But thank you.”

“As you wish,” UrSu nodded again. “You should find everything as you left it. But if you or our guest lack anything, don’t fear to wake someone.” They smiled a sad smile. “I’m afraid we are as light sleepers as always.”

“I’m sorry…to hear it,” said UrGoh. “I’m…actually sleeping better…lately.”

The smile quirked even more bittersweetly. “That also is well. A good night to you both. The Standing Stones will keep watch.”

The Master bowed, and as if commanded, the UrRu silently dispersed to their longhouses.

“I’m sorry,” SkekGra was stammering almost as soon as the door to UrGoh’s quarters was closed. “You don’t have to forgive me, but I am sorry. I tried—”

The Wanderer reared up on their feet (always a significant event) and toddled a bit heavily over to their other half’s side to put an arm around their shoulders. “No. Stop. Stop now. You did well.”

“No I _didn’t_. Spare me.”

“You did…everything you could.”

“And it wasn’t enough!” SkekGra wrapped their talons fitfully around their head-rill, as though they meant to wrest it off. “Grot take me, I’m failing us already. This is _unacceptable_. How will we ever manage all the rest if I can’t do this?”

“No. SkekGra, look at me. —Look.”

The Skeksis groaned, but acquiesced. “I’m looking…”

“Good.” UrGoh directed an unyielding gaze into their counterpart’s eyes. “Now, listen. And remember…that _I don’t lie_.”

“No, you don’t,” SkekGra murmured. This fact did still astound them daily.

“You did very well. Your…body,” said the Wanderer, laying a hand along the side of the Seeker’s beak, “which is…also _our_ body…is not the problem here. Your…courtesy…is not the problem. I am _not_ …frustrated…with you.”

Puzzlement finally overcame guilt in the Skeksis’ expression as their capacity to think slowly re-engaged. “But you are—frustrated. I can tell. Then what are you frustrated with?”

A beat, and then suddenly, in surprise: “Or _who_ …?”

UrGoh shook their head, allowing themselves a dejected sigh at last. “I’m…not entirely sure.”

The UrRu folded back down to their normal posture, then walked over to their old bureau and picked up their old beaten-copper washbasin. A fluttering of dust-fuzz cascaded off the shelf with it. They began to brush it off, then remembered what they were about to do with it anyway. “You…stay here…and change. I’ll fetch us…some water from the well. Then we will see…to our clothes…so the stains don’t set.”

“Good idea.”

UrGoh hummed and made their ever-patient way back across the room to open the door.

“…Of course it had to be _red_ food,” SkekGra grumbled, turning to open up their bags.

The UrRu stopped and mulled over whether they should say any more just yet—no. Nothing was certain, and as far as their dark half went, it might as well wait for now. They lifted the door latch and went out.

* * *

“I…can help,” UrGoh called softly to UrAmaj as they entered the dim kitchen, where the Cook was still doing the last bits of evening cleanup, their long bagpipe sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms with ropy, surprisingly strong muscles.

The Cook swiveled their neck, turning their good-humored countenance to UrGoh. “Oh. No,” they called back, with an airy shooing motion of a spare hand. “You should rest, old friend. I’m nearly done.”

“I’m sorry…for all the trouble. Please, let me help.” The Wanderer propped their washbasin up against the wall just inside the door and came over, picking up the stack of dried bowls to put away.

“Only because I’ve missed you,” UrAmaj relented.

“And I you.” UrGoh smiled at them. They said nothing more until they had the bowls and cups all tucked away. Then they sidled over and leaned their front elbows conversationally on the big preparation block opposite the Cook, who stood scrubbing at a chalky red stain that was trying to install itself permanently in the scratches in the wood.

“But UrAmaj…” began the Wanderer very gently, “I fear that malt…was not…among your best.”

UrAmaj froze for a moment, staring down at the stain with widened eyes. Then they went back to scrubbing, not looking up.

“I’m—sorry it didn’t please, UrGoh. I’d truly hoped to have better for you…after so long apart.”

Mystics rarely used the word _truly_. It was superfluous. If something wasn’t true, then it should not be said.

“I know you did. You always do,” UrGoh reassured them. They laid their hand on the Cook’s unoccupied front-right hand and sat silent, considering how to proceed. It was slightly nerve-wracking. They’d never talked this way with anyone before except SkekGra, and UrAmaj was almost the diametric opposite of the Seeker. Things like this were not supposed to be _necessary_ in the village.

“You’re…a wonderful cook, UrAmaj,” they said at last. “Your meals keep the Mystics…warm in winter…and cool in summer. You spend so many hours…preparing your dishes, and all to find…the _perfect_ combination of…the six flavors…for each day’s tasks. You cast the stars…even of your cooking utensils…before using them.”

The Cook kept their gaze glued to their washcloth and the ornery stain, but their voice was quietly miserable. UrGoh winced to hear it. “Then I am all the sorrier to disappoint.”

“It’s no disappointment...old friend. But I...must ask, is all—well with you? Such imbalance in you is…rare. And your smoked glasrig malts…were never _red_ before…were they?”

UrAmaj said nothing, and went on saying nothing. After all, UrRu never considered that rude. But just now the Wanderer did find it—irritating.

“It wasn’t your idea...was it?”

UrAmaj still didn’t speak. Although they did finally stop trying to wear a hole in their block, and dispiritedly leaned on it instead, just as UrGoh was doing.

“The powdered Aerin bark?” the Wanderer pressed, and could no longer stop themselves from adding, “My kin. Don’t _ignore_ me.”

“I know, it was too much,” the Cook murmured in deepest contrition.

“You’re…not answering.”

“I…I tried to counter its Dying-Sun influence with tirb nectar. That’s why it was late.”

“And that…is _not_ …how you cook,” the Wanderer entreated them—still gently, but implacably. “UrAmaj…you, least of all of us…can ever hope to keep…a guilty secret for long.”

“UrGoh, please. Don’t.” The Cook’s downcast eyes shut tight. Their water-withered fingers reached up to the bridge of their nose and rubbed.

“I _believe_ …I know who did this…to us. And to you. I am going to them…now.” UrGoh squeezed the hand underneath theirs. It was meant as an encouraging, forgiving gesture—the Wanderer was no more angry with the Cook than with the Seeker—but they had no idea if that was coming across. Maybe poor UrAmaj was beyond anyone’s comfort right now. “So…if I am _wrong_ …now’s the time…to stop me.”

They pulled away from the table and went to fetch their basin, leaving a pregnant stillness in their wake. At the door they turned and looked back at UrAmaj, who had their washcloth twisted tight in their gnarled hands.

“They will know I told you,” said the Cook sorrowfully. Odd, how such a wise and ancient being could sound so like a frightened childling. The Wanderer honestly didn’t know whether to feel more grieved for them, or more profoundly disturbed that that presented with this choice, they had only seen one path open to them.

“They will know I realized…before I even spoke to you,” UrGoh returned.

The Master was very slow to answer the knock. Granted, it had been many trine since the Wanderer’s last visit home. They were all older, and UrSu had always seemed to age more quickly than any of the others. UrGoh’s own knees had far too much to say in the mornings nowadays. The Seeker said that was no wonder for anyone who went about squashed like a bellows for half an Age, and they were probably right.

When the door at last opened, the Master did look exceedingly weary, but on seeing who it was they summoned up a congenial expression. “Ah, UrGoh. Do you or your friend need something after all?”

“Yes, Master,” the Wander replied soberly, only a small fidget betraying itself in the tip of their tail. “I need to speak with you.”

Congeniality dissolved slightly towards concern. “Yes, and we shall. But I was about to meditate, and you must rest. Let us have tea before breakfast, hm? Now good night, my friend.”

They went to shut the door. UrGoh calmly put their hand on the door-jamb—not to force themselves inside, but simply to place it such that UrSu couldn’t push the door to without crushing the Wanderer’s fingers.

UrSu halted immediately and gave the Wanderer a startled blink. Concern had now become…evaluation. It wasn’t an angry mien at all: the Master looked more like UrZah balancing a stack of stones on each other, carefully studying it to determine what minute shift of weight had occurred. Even so, UrGoh felt more afraid than they had during the Conqueror’s most ferocious outbursts.

The two of them stood there long enough for a full verse of _The Ballad of Jerra-Jen_ (which was what UrGoh found themselves suddenly reciting in their head, to keep from either tottering away in shock at their own effrontery or babbling irrational nonsense). Mystics were rarely quick to make decisions. But at length the Master gave a heavy nod, standing aside to let the Wanderer in.

“Come in then, my kin, and we shall indeed speak.”


	4. Fear's Shape (Trust's Lack)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which yr. humble correspondent wipes the floor with tiny pieces of Mystic hearts, because I am a terrible person.
> 
> Whoa nelly, this ended up being a long one.

“Master, I don’t understand,” UrGoh began.

They trundled their full length into the Master’s quarters so that UrSu could close the door. They could already feel fuzz gathering under their tail, collecting in the hair of its tip. The floor here was nearly as dusty as in UrGoh’s rooms, and those had stood empty for a good eight or nine trine—most likely without anyone except UrMa coming in to straighten up or borrow something. The Master was not the Monk (whose room was practically an indoor cave), but they’d always had a tendency to get distracted by goings-on in the dwelling between their ears, and neglect the one the rest of their body had to live in. There was, however, one little trail of clean surface visible, where a loose loop had been paced repeatedly and recently.

“There’s much about which I could say the same,” UrSu calmly replied. They gestured for UrGoh to have a seat by the book-laden writing-desk if they wanted, which they did not. “But you wanted to speak now, so let us hope we’ll understand better together. Share your mind, UrGoh. Smoke, if it helps.”

The Wanderer’s heart was already in their mouth at the mere thought of sharing that much mind with UrSu, but they shook out their mane insistently. “You already… _know_ …what I’d speak of, Master. If you have…a rebuke for me…then make it. But how…could you drag poor UrAmaj…into this?”

“‘Drag’ our Cook?” The Master seemed genuinely puzzled. Granted, this was hardly a common turn of phrase among Mystics. “I drag no one.”

UrGoh frowned. “Do you say you _didn’t_ …make them add the Aerin bark?”

“No, I didn’t.” UrSu’s keen gaze answered UrGoh’s accusatory one head-on.

Then they looked away, finishing: “I added it myself. I don’t ask my kin to do what I will not. Blame me, not them.”

“I do. Or—no,” the Wanderer contradicted themselves at once, shocked at their own words. The Master looked a little shocked as well. “That is…I will…if I must. But I—I don’t want to…not without knowing why.”

“Of course. You will always ask why,” nodded UrSu.

“You…ruined UrAmaj’s meal…and their evening. And my evening…and our guest’s. My other half. Their throat… _burned_. Mine burned with it. Was that…in the plan too?”

At that the Master _did_ flinch painfully. “UrGoh, please. That—I didn’t expect, no. The Cook’s malts always have those herbal drops in them. You know that.”

The Wanderer fought off the wave of guilt that immediately tried to sweep them under. Yes, they knew that. The herbal drops were always there in the malts and stews, sometimes in the soups as well. They themselves had forgotten about any potential trouble there, till it was too late to warn SkekGra. Of course their Master hadn’t actually tried to _injure_ the two of them, ruin their voices. How could UrGoh even think such an evil thing?

“I am very sorry for your friend’s hurt, and yours,” UrSu continued, even more subdued. “I didn’t think of it in time. None of us did, or we’d have stopped them. It—would never have occurred to me that they might just _drop_ one of those things right in their mouth, whole.”

UrGoh had actually begun to wonder whether perhaps they should sit and take their pipe out after all. Start over, put the whole visit on a footing more proper to old friends parted for much too long, and try to work it all out that way. But now, even as they patted their pockets for their leaf, part of the quibble stubbornly circled back to demand better attention.

“But it _did_ occur to you that—there might be _something_ like that,” they pointed out. “You still…put the bark in. You knew, and you were hoping.”

“I knew your…‘Seeker’…was a Skeksis. _Is_ a Skeksis.” The Master’s lip crooked. “Even to this hidden backwater, the stories come.”

“Of course…they’re a Skeksis,” protested the Wanderer. “Everyone…knew that. We all have one. We all— _are_ one. But you did that on purpose…without need. You just wanted the others to see them—that way. You wanted them to look like…like…”

UrSu gave them a few long moments before supplying, kindly enough, “Like what they are?”

UrGoh hummed their agitation. “And can you not trust our kin to remember that themselves? Do you so doubt their judgment?”

“What I showed our kin,” the Master explained, in their always-patient way, “was truth, nothing more nor less. The Conqueror _is_ stained with rivers of blood…” Here, for the first time, a shadow fell across their wrinkled countenance. “Real blood. Not red malt. I’d guess those very same skirts have soaked in it more than once. You say you invite scrutiny. Why, then, do you object to letting the others see?”

The Wanderer tried not to think of how they might be washing said skirts with their own hands later. Deep indigo did camouflage a lot of misadventures, which was probably why it was chosen. But that wasn’t the point. “I want our kin to give the _whole_ truth a chance—”

“And can you not trust them to judge it for themselves?”

UrGoh rubbed a shoulder fretfully. Something was wrong here. They knew something was wrong here, but they couldn’t put their finger on it yet.

“My friend,” said the Master, laying a hand on that same shoulder. “You have always been patient in your feet. And patient in your tongue…more patient than I’ll ever be, alas. But up here…” They tapped the side of their head knowingly. “You’ve always raced ahead, not seeking the counsel of sun, moon, or star. And now, I fear you grow outright—reckless. Bringing this pollution, uninvited, into our midst.”

 _Pollution._ The Wanderer tried to remind themselves of all the things they’d committed to heart before coming to the village. Of course the UrRu would fear UrGoh’s dark half. Of course they couldn’t be expected to arrive immediately at a point that had taken UrGoh multiple unum to reach. None of _them_ had a message from Thra stamped in fire in their brains, urging them on and demanding they give up old ways. But it still made UrGoh’s stomach churn to hear such heartless words coming from the Master. _Pollution._

“But I have a reason for doing all this, Master—a vision. If you’ll only hear it.”

“We will hear it, tomorrow. But…I’ve a feeling I know what you want of us.” UrSu shuffled heavily across the room and lowered themselves onto a bench by their sleeping-frame. “You will ask that we follow you down this path you’ve chosen—a path whose end we know nothing of. No, not even the middle, to say nothing of the end. You’d have us try to reverse the Crystal’s punishment. Its rightful judgment, on our arrogance.”

The Wanderer shook their head. “No. Its judgment I accept. I could bear the punishment as well—if our punishment weren’t also _everyone’s_ punishment. I thought we all agreed it was our own mistake that set our darker natures free to stalk this world? That we should have remained as we were, remained UrSkek—even if it meant another thousand trine of exile.”

“Yes,” UrSu countered, extending their shaggy neck and arms. “ _Should_ have. But now it is too late to remain.”

“When, then? When are we to be whole, Master?” It was a question that hurt almost too much to put into words, yet UrGoh now saw no choice but to ask at long last. “When will this world be healed? Never?”

“If fate decrees,” returned the Master sorrowfully. “It isn’t our decision, my kin. We’re not of Thra, we are not its rightful masters. We shouldn’t…be here at all.”

“But it’s also too late not to be here! And as long as we’re here, the Skeksis are here and running rampant. The fact that it’s still happening and getting worse is our will, not Thra’s!” UrGoh gestured with their left hands back in the direction of their quarters. “We don’t even need the true unity to begin making it right, Master—in a bare few unum, I’ve already convinced the _Empire’s Conqueror_ to lay down their sword forever! _Why_ is that not good news? You must know how many lives that will save. You must care—”

“Do you hear how quickly and loudly you’re speaking?” UrSu rounded on the Wanderer with a bewildered look.

UrGoh stopped dead, eyes wide.

UrSu said nothing more, but the distress in their face, a face more dear and familiar to the Wanderer than their own, was so plain that it became its own form of argument. No authority or command could be carried in those supplicating eyes. There was no Master behind them at all.

UrGoh drew in a shaky breath. “All these hundreds of trine, everyone has complained I’m too slow…” they observed ruefully. “Now I’m too fast.”

UrSu stared back at them.

“Do I frighten you?” the Wanderer abruptly asked.

The other Mystic made a long inhale and exhale of their own before answering. “Yes.”

They bowed their head. “I’m sorry, but you do. This is…not the UrGoh I’ve so long known and—loved.”

The Wanderer took up a seat on the stool beside the Master, leaning toward them with urgency. “But it _is_ the GraGoh you once loved just as much! Can you…not love them again? Your whole self and mine were among the best friends to be found under any sun.” Then they looked down as well, finishing sadly: “Why is that not true anymore?”

UrSu sighed. “Yes. And that was part of our original sin, was it not?” Seeing UrGoh’s brow twist in confusion, they went on, “Too…particular in our friendships. Too much love for each other; not enough saved for everything else. And worse yet, we thought that might be the right way of things. Thus we failed—repeatedly—to submit to the greater good.”

“Then you wish we hadn’t been such friends,” UrGoh murmured.

“…UrGoh, please. You leave me nowhere to stand.” The Master rubbed one hand against another, trying to soothe its swollen joints.

“And SkekGra is _also_ GraGoh,” pursued the Wanderer. “They are _also_ your old friend, and I know you—recognize them. I’ve seen it in your face. That bothers you. But you realize…we are still one, regardless? It cannot be changed—only…reckoned with. When you reject SkekGra the Seeker, you reject GraGoh that was, and you reject…me. Master, surely that isn’t what you _want_ to do.”

The Master grimaced and closed their eyes. “No, it’s not what—I…no. I don’t want to, UrGoh.” Their voice had ground down to almost a whisper. “I will never want to.”

“Yet you think you might have to,” UrGoh guessed. “You may miss GraGoh, but you don’t want to see them again. You think they’d still be…contaminated, with all the Conqueror’s evils. Even after unity.”

“I think it’s possible. What do you want me to say?” pleaded UrSu. “I cannot pretend certainty to ease your mind. Our mistakes have broken the world once.”

“And I’m afraid of making another mistake too, Master!” the Wanderer pleaded in turn. “But what if…hiding from our other halves _is_ another mistake? There is no such thing as inaction…even not choosing is a choice. You, SoSu, _you_ taught me that.”

“ _SoSu_ is even less to be trusted than GraGoh,” retorted the Master—with a bitterness UrGoh had never heard from them before.

UrGoh frankly gaped at them, but their reply was a weary, almost disbelieving glance. “You know that, Wanderer. The Crystal revealed it to all…long, long ago. My own dark half was worse than yours almost from the first. And since then, their crimes have far outstripped…even the Conqueror’s.”

“And is _that_ —what the matter is?” It was dazing, how completely out of nowhere this had seemed to come, and yet how quickly it made _every possible_ kind of sense. UrGoh snaked their neck down, around, and up, seeking their Master’s face for study, as though they were some entirely new person coming on scene. That was very nearly how it felt. “Is that the shape of your fear? _SkekSo the Magnificent—Liberator of Thra—Subduer of Hordes—Bringer of Gifts?_ The Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor?”

The titles in question were now used seriously only on the most formal occasions of state; in the last couple hundred trine, they’d mostly become fodder for puns, humorous names for dishes, pet Fizzgigs, et cetera. The Wanderer had no idea whether the Master was aware of that development, but whether they were or not, the words visibly struck them like body blows, and they hid their eyes behind their hands. For a moment UrGoh honestly worried they would be ill.

“…UrSu?” UrGoh picked up one of the Master’s other hands and cupped it between theirs. It was cold.

“Wouldn’t yours be in that shape, if that shape belonged to you?” UrSu asked quietly. An appalled little chuckle escaped them. “I don’t know if you can understand. You’re already scandalized by me tonight. I’m a little scandalized by myself. But UrGoh, everything you’ve shown us since you came here…the anger, the impatience, the discontent your dark half has awakened in you. Can you even imagine what might happen when I tried to take— _that_ monster to my bosom? Perhaps you can master yours. I won’t presume to soothsay. Let UrYod do so, or UrZah if they wish, and if you’ll let them. But I… _can’t_ control SkekSo. No—” They waved off UrGoh’s immediate noise of dissent. “That was the entire point. I have _never_ been able to. This is as close to knowing some peace from my dark nature as I can come, my friend. Your answer…won’t work for me. If I try, it will only be another disaster, and once again, others will likely pay more dearly for it than myself. I can’t allow that, Gr—I can’t allow it, UrGoh.”

UrGoh gripped their fingers more tightly. “You haven’t even heard us yet…Master. Perhaps we bring more hope than you know, and nothing…would give me more joy. But suppose, suppose in the end you’re right about yourself, about your other half. You still cannot decide for the rest. And you will _not_ …do this to SkekGra. Do you understand? _We are one._ Whatever you think they deserve—whatever danger you see in them…cannot change that fact. What you do to them, you do to me.”

“Old friend, you’re making that much…inarguable.” The Master smiled faintly.

“All we ask of you is the chance. Please, promise me…for the sake of all our trine…all the time from before…that you’ll give it to us.”

The Master looked up at them, and the Wanderer realized at once from the other Mystic’s troubled expression that they’d done it again—brought in a custom from the outer world that was meaningless here.

“It is arrogant to promise,” UrSu reminded them.

“It is unkind to engineer dining mishaps for guests. Will you give it to us?”

The Master’s eyes widened minutely, but then they nodded and patted UrGoh’s hand, which was still wrapped around their own.

The Wanderer stood, causing the stool to creak with relief (they’d been balanced a bit precariously on it, in their eagerness to be close to UrSu while making their entreaties). Their legs felt strangely light and jointless now, but perhaps that was just the crashing-in of their own relief. “Thank you, UrSu. And I—I won’t mention any of this to our kin, not even UrAmaj. We just want…the chance, as I said, so… _neither_ of us should try…to prejudice them. Let it be…a start from scratch?”

UrSu nodded again. They were still more than halfway to dumbstruck, but they managed to get out, “Of course.”

“Then I won’t keep you…from your meditation…any longer. Good night; sweet sleep to you.”

“And to you, UrGoh.” The Master hesitated. “To—both of you.”

It sounded like they were _trying_ to mean it, and that at least was something. _Just the chance_ , UrGoh reminded themselves. They half-turned back.

“Thank you, my friend.”

It wasn’t until the Wanderer was down at the well, finally fetching the water they’d supposedly gone out for, that they realized the Master had apologized for the burn to SkekGra’s throat, which they didn’t purposely cause…but not for the Aerin bark, which they had. Strange.

* * *

“That has to be a landmark achievement even for you,” SkekGra remarked as they opened the door for UrGoh to carry in the full washbasin.

“Beg…pardon?”

“Longest twenty-pace trip in Thra’s history.”

“Oh.” UrGoh tilted their head to a contrite angle in lieu of a shrug. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Your healer friend—UrIm? Came by with the medicine.” They picked up a little stoppered gourd on the table by the sleeping-frame and shook it slightly, by way of demonstration.

The Wanderer’s answering grunt was notably unenthusiastic as they set the basin down near the door, then began removing their coat and cowl and shirt. The left-front shirtsleeve was much in need of a good soak. Honestly, _every_ scrap of cloth they possessed needed a wash, but that was a matter for daylight. The main thing now was just to keep the bark stains from setting. “There’s…soap on the shelf there. Should still…be all right.”

SkekGra brought it over, along with their own shawl and outer skirt. The wrapped dressing-robe they had on was one UrGoh had seen them in only a couple times: light and loose, made of a few different semi-lustrous and iridescent figured fabrics, and closed with a tasseled sash at the waist and a toggle below the left shoulder—the latter currently left undone so that the lining fell over in a triangular flap of deep magenta. The first word it brought to a Mystic’s mind was “extravagant.” (Not that UrRu garments weren’t densely decorated too, but that was spiritual, purposeful work, done lovingly by UrUtt over many trine, and in much humbler materials).

However, the second word was “soft,” and that had an odd appeal to it, despite its decadent air. Perhaps because it was so unlike the Conqueror’s well-crafted but rigid and scarred armor. As the Skeksis grew older and their once-brilliant natural plumage began to go ragged and dim—or fall off entirely—UrGoh supposed it made sense they’d try to replace it with finery from Gelfling looms…and that, too, was somehow a soft and almost endearing thing. The UrRu had never _had_ any young glories to cling to so desperately, even if they also never needed to worry about terrifying anyone with what age was turning them into.

The Seeker had taken up a seat on the floor by the Wanderer, leaning on one hand, knees laid to the side and tail curled around from behind to front. Working at the basin was a one-person job, but it seemed they wished to be companionable.

Or it was something else. “What happened?” they asked, softly but insistently. “You were taking so long, I peeked out and I didn’t see you anywhere. And the shouting. It sounded like you, but you—don’t…”

“It’s…the Master.” The Wanderer had to force it out. “I fear…they’re already…against us. I think UrZah is as well, and that’s…a problem. They are the wisest—the others look to them, as our wisest.”

“Oh.” SkekGra sounded discouraged but not surprised. “What about UrSol? They’re the other one in that cadre.”

“Cadre…?”

“Or whatever your people call it. The three of them are the main arbiters of things, and then the Healer and the—Peacemaker are together in sort of a lesser orbit around them. The Cook and the Herbalist are allies along with the Weaver, and I think it was the Scribe? And then UrTih is just off in their own world, which of course makes perfect sense. Also that other one I can’t remember the name or title of, the one practically in rags.”

Seeing UrGoh’s gaze snap up to them in astonishment, they blinked. “What? A Skeksis has to notice these things. Unless you _want_ to get eviscerated at court. —And they’re not as hard to tell apart as I thought they’d be, your Mystics, they all wear little things that have to do with their work. So what about UrSol, then?”

“UrSen the Monk…is the one you can’t remember.”

“Oh, right! Rags.”

“And UrSol…I don’t know. They’re…less certain. But I’m…not sure they…would contest the Master…over such a thing.”

“But you would, it seems. Loudly. So much for resting your voice.” They frowned and looked back toward the bedside table. “Speaking of which, the medicine. I didn’t take any yet because I didn’t know if we should split it evenly, or what you’d think best.”

“I’m not…entirely sure we should…have any.”

The Seeker turned slowly back to UrGoh with a look of deep dismay—almost horror.

“UrGoh. _No_.”

The UrRu’s head sank as though it had suddenly become too much for their even their sturdy neck to support, their thick soft hair falling to half-hide the guilt on their face.

“You can’t mean that, UrGoh. Your friend who _loves_ you made it for us, to heal us. Tell me you don’t think—that—that’s Skeksis, not Mystics!”

“It is…the reason the malt was red,” the Wanderer confessed, and when they looked up at SkekGra there was such sadness in their expression—sadness for _UrGoh_ —that they at once instinctively tried to repress their own. It was so much harder to see their feelings echoed in someone else’s eyes. “UrSu…saw to it.”

The Seeker shook their head, utterly incredulous. “That’s not supposed to…”

“I know.” The UrRu went back to soaping and rinsing stains, thinking dolefully to themselves, _If only words could be washed away too, like a garment can be scrubbed clean._

That was what apologies were supposed to be for, of course—perhaps not so much to wash away, because nothing altered the past, but at least to mend. But when was the last time anyone in the village had really had to apologize for anything…serious? Had the Master _ever_ had to do it? They couldn’t remember now.

“What’s happening here, UrGoh?” the Skeksis implored. “What are we doing to these people, that they’re acting like this? It’s not just because I’m here—is it? I’m not _catching_ or something?”

“No. The Master is frightened. Of both of us…and of what we…are becoming together. And UrAmaj…couldn’t say no. They can’t bear to…see the Master upset. No one can.”

“Well. That’s almost as bad as…us with the Emperor. It’s SkekSo’s anger and punishment we dread, but if it ends up coming out to the same thing…wait. They’re counterparts, aren’t they? SoS—” The Seeker stopped themselves, looking up and all around with almost religious anxiety. Given what had happened when they’d said the name _TekTih_ earlier, UrGoh couldn’t blame them. The Master often dwelled on vanished Ages, but it’d probably been many a trine since UrTih had even thought about the long-dead before. Or been spoken to as…who they really were.

“Yes, the Master and the Emperor…are one,” confirmed UrGoh. “And that is part of it…as well. Every…objection…I had about you…is multiplied many times over.”

“If you mean UrSu doesn’t like SkekSo very much,” and here the Seeker dropped into a stage whisper that was only half-ironic, “I don’t like them all that much either. _Nobody_ does. Well, maybe SkekVar, they’re like a Fizzgig, they’d love whoever was meanest—but nobody else.”

Then they took on a more pondering demeanor. “ _Grrak._ That is a problem, isn’t it. They’d have to worry…what all of you would think of them, of their whole self. Whether the others would still _want_ to be friends, after all the Emperor did. Thra! You’re worried about that too, aren’t you? You’d be mad not to be. It’s not just that we hated—our self. And it’s not just wondering if the UrRu can stand to have me around, like—like this, like I am now. It’s that even if we gained the true unity, I’d still…be in there somewhere, everything I’ve done would be there. Oh Grot, have you been worried about that all this time, and I didn’t know?”

The Wanderer was brought up a little short by that. They thought the Seeker had realized all those implications some time ago. They’d certainly spent many days working together through the points of their argument that logically _proceeded_ from them, so the Mystic had assumed it was now understood. But perhaps they’d never brought it up quite as bluntly as the Skeksis was doing—and it didn’t seem to be a happy notion.

“Well,” ventured UrGoh, “would it not be the same on…the Skeksis…side of things?”

“Oh, _I_ won’t forget everything that frilly bag of bones has done, no. But I promised myself that if we’re lucky enough to get to that point, I’ll forgive somehow. We’ll forgive. For all our sakes. We’ll just have to, won’t we?”

“I…” UrGoh was further startled. “Ah. I didn’t mean…that. I meant…do you worry…whether your kin could…accept the _me_ part…of us? Even after unity?”

This, too, was something that clearly hadn’t yet occurred. “Accept—oh. Accept _you_. _In_ us. Afterwards. Er, I guess not? Obviously? What wouldn’t they like in _your_ side of us, once they themselves are whole? I suppose…” Their jaw moved silently, as though they were mouthing the entire train of thought to themselves. “I suppose I might worry they’d, I don’t know, take advantage? Of your dear little sweetsap heart. But then, their hearts would be softer too. Wouldn’t they?”

“They should be, yes…” mused the Wanderer.

“Or—Thra. We _might_ talk _much_ too slowly.” All the earlier horror re-entered the Seeker’s eyes at this. “Oh, no. We might even drive _ourselves_ mad. Oh, no. Can we just agree now to let me take over that part, please?”

UrGoh gave a regretful _whuff_. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure…it works that way.”

“Did we talk that slowly when we were an UrSkek? Can you recall?? This is a very serious point, UrGoh!”

The Mystic smiled weakly—things like this were the Seeker’s usual way of trying to cheer them both up, they knew.

“Deathly…serious, yes. But not exactly…urgent. And not something…we have much control over. Which,” they rumbled listlessly, “may be the one thing…all our present problems…have in common. This should do…for now.”

“Yeah. Here, give us that, I’ll just hang everything on the backs of chairs unless you’ve got something else. _You_ get ready for bed. UrGoh, I think, about the tonic…”

The Wanderer nodded tiredly. They opened the door, then picked up the basin to turn it over, letting the water meander downhill to join the little stream that emptied out of the lowest basin of the fountain. “Yes, you are right. I shouldn’t…let fear…run away with me. I don’t— _really_ think they’d…that is…drink what you need of it. I’ll have the rest.”

“All right.” The Seeker looked out briefly into the commons where the triangle of benches still stood in its new configuration, then firmly shut the door, muttering, “No need to keep the _whole_ village entertained.”

“They’re almost…all asleep now.”

“Almost?”

“Yes. Almost.”

“I just hope they don’t _utterly_ hate us by lunchtime tomorrow—I’d like to at least get the rest of the washing done before they kick us out.”

“Hrm. So would I.”

“ _Hrm_ , quoth the wise Wanderer.” SkekGra hesitated and glanced backward at their counterpart. “I’m…not entirely jesting there, wise Wanderer. You know we agreed we, ah, might have to come back more than once. Even to the Mystics. Show them our—well, hopefully our progress. Or at least, that we haven’t gone _insane_ and you haven’t become UrGoh the Slayer, Scourge of Thra. Assuming we’re correct on that point. But if you think we’re already to where we should…strategically withdraw, just for now—”

“No.” UrGoh’s rejection was flat. “Not until…they hear the vision. It’s too important. Thra didn’t give it…to us…to sit on.”

“All right. Well, don’t say _I’ve_ never counseled _you_ to patience.”

UrGoh went over to the bureau, where a carved stone about the size of their fist sat, bleeding pale radiance from deep within itself to light the rest of the room. They picked it up and brought it and the tonic over to SkekGra’s bedroll. A stroke of the stone’s contours, a gentle breath across the top of it, and its light dulled until it was just enough to not stub one’s toes by.

Then they fetched the covers from their sleeping-frame and carried those over as well, some for the Seeker and some for themselves, and finally bent over their bags to pull out their own bedroll.

SkekGra’s brow wrinkled uncertainly. “Are we still camping? I thought you said those, whatchacallems”—they waved a hand in the sleeping-frame’s direction—“are better for your back.”

“That… _is_ better for my back. But this…will be better for…” The Wanderer tapped their temple with a spare hind hand.

“Ah. Right. —Really?” The Seeker’s jaw went a bit crooked. “Fine with me. Welcome back. To our health,” they added in a mock-toast as they threw back their portion of the tonic, then handed it over.

It didn’t feel quite the same as their nights on the open road; no smoky smell or remnants of warmth from a smothered fire, no rotation of the heavens overhead to stare at with that vague, ancient homesickness. But maybe it _was_ some little statement, some little reclaiming, to sleep in what had now become their traditional arrangement, even confined within the shuttling warps and wefts of the dreams of the UrRu and their standing stones.

And the way SkekGra dove into their musty blankets at the end of a long day, with exactly the same enthusiasm as if they were falling into a mattress of pure braze-thistle silk in a Maudra’s guest hall, that was also beginning to feel oddly like home.

“Admit it,” the Seeker said lazily. “The _real_ reason you’re sleeping better nowadays is you know the scary Skeksis won't ever let anything harm us.”

The Wanderer snorted. They laid out their coat on their bedroll to serve as a top coverlet, then slowly eased inside. “I have never…required a bodyguard…Conqueror-that-was.”

“Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it. You have one now. It’s what you get for listening to visions.”

“Hm, yes. I suppose…I deserve some punishment for that.”

The eyes of their other half glinted at them, reflecting the light from the stone. “UrGoh. If you really wanted…we could do as we did that one time, when it was so cold in the high hills. I know I complained, it was a little bizarre, because of that whole—skin-contact business. But if you wanted.”

UrGoh grunted a _no_ , though they were smiling. They bent their neck around, not quite in half, to rest their triangular head across their crooked right arms. “It’s all right.”

“Yeah, I’m hardly a Mounder-skin rug. Or even a Mystic. Not very—squishy.”

The Wanderer’s tail shrugged itself out of its own blankets and wormed under the Seeker’s, to rest atop the Skeksis’ tail. The Seeker chuckled and twined them together.

“Oh, but _that’ll_ help, will it?”

“Yeah,” said the UrRu decisively.

“We’re tucked in snug now?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, then. Don’t make me tell you a scary story, just go to sleep.”

“I…will try…” UrGoh mumbled, though they didn’t hold out much hope for it. Slumber was a thing for clear consciences, and if that held true Thra only knew when they might sleep again.

In the event, however, they were not just asleep, but dead to the world within a few short moments.


	5. Dreams (Nightmares)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which yr. humble sat down to write a chapter mainly meant to explain a thing about UrSu (I swear!), only to find _every single Mystic_ in the village lining up to have their souls thrown in the bullet blender too. I guess they really ARE gluttons for punishment? Holy merde, space dinos.
> 
> Anyway, that's why the thing's long enough to be its own story. O_o At least there's definitely some stuff for obscure-Mystic fans!
> 
> Minor CW for Ch 5: limited dream gore and violence, affecting humanoids and animals.

UrZah always hated the dreams where someone was in pain, because they liked them too much.

It was a thing they’d never been able to make sense of about themselves, and now that the _other_ was off in its own body almost all the time, they usually didn’t have to think about it. In their waking hours the pain of others was only what it ought to be, a prompt to sadness and compassion, a chance to help. And while they didn’t have it in them to be an UrIm—not conversational enough, no bedside manner—their magic was sometimes called for in non-corporeal healing. Occasionally the Healer allowed UrZah to assist in the corporeal kind as well, when one of the UrRu was sick or hurt enough to need the efforts of two. Handing over implements, wrapping bandages, applying poultices, giving medicine or food or water.

The Ritual-Guardian welcomed the chance to help. Indeed, it tended to fill them with an odd, overwhelming gratitude to whoever was serving as the object of their attentions. That was their paradox: they’d always been emotionally undemonstrative by nature, yet they’d also always had this profound need to be needed. They were fairly sure it had been the same for the lost ZokZah.

In their dreams at night, there was that very same happiness, that ineffable gratitude and love for the suffering one. But the suffering was usually something they themselves were causing, or at minimum allowing to continue, and that made the dreams ill ones.

Now what in Thra the _Monk_ could possibly have done to warrant such a horrible punishment as this was beyond UrZah. A more inoffensive creature than UrSen could hardly be invented. But it didn’t matter because somehow, there they were anyway, screaming and begging as they were lowered over some kind of stone ledge by the hair of their tail. And UrZah was the one slowly paying out the rope they hung by, watching the squeaking pulley turn. UrNol stood nearby with a large bowl of something, and as soon as UrZah had tied off the rope and tested its knots, they stepped forward and upended it over UrSen’s flailing body below.

Ah, sweetsap, of course. To attract the judflies and stinging flits that always buzzed near the sewer outfall from the Mouth of Skreesh.

They reared up, raising their four arms into a sacramental posture (a shuddering, exhilarating feeling of obscenity at once accompanied this), and heard themselves saying in a rich magisterial voice: _“Now we will stand and behold the wages of defiance, until the Second Brother sets.”_ Behind them they could hear other voices, gravelly voices cawing their approval— _“Dangle the tail! Dangle the tail!”_

How beautifully, how vainly the Monk struggled and howled. Their sacrifice may or may not have been deserved, but it _would_ be salutary. All would be reminded of their obligations. Those in the court contemplating mischief (naming no names) would check themselves. Much other suffering would be prevented, and in this way, UrSen was actually saving them all from themselves. It was noble of them, really.

Then UrZah craned their neck over the ledge, wondering how long it’d take for the flies to arrive and give the spectacle its full proper effect, and saw to their dismay that it was no longer UrSen down there. They’d been replaced by some other creature, a dark skeletal thing—its legs going rigid and slack by turns, its face hidden by a tangle of rich gold and brocaded fabrics that had flipped upside down—thrashing about miserably in the still heat of the waning day.

* * *

UrAc was getting along remarkably well with their dark half, perhaps because they’d engaged in some unintentional but clearly effective flattery. Not flattery even, but truth—the great Library at the Castle of the Crystal _was_ still a breathtaking sight, despite its state of relative neglect. (All the UrSkeks had been avid readers, but only a few of the Skeksis were. That left SkekOk and their elderly Podling attendants little incentive to keep the place sparkling.)

“I see the geography section is bigger than ever,” UrAc remarked. Their staff and SkekOk’s both ticked along the massive stone floor, creating an uneven but somehow satisfying rhythm.

The Scroll-Keeper gave a delighted little cackle. “Yes! Well, geography isn’t just the land and the water, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You _say_ you know, but where do Mystics ever go?” sneered the Skeksis. “As for me, it may seem that I sit alone on one little perch day and night, but it’s not so. With these tomes, I ride on the shoulders of our mightiest and boldest, our warriors and adventurers. Our Conqueror, our General, our Enforcer, even our Satirist…all their tales and travels are here. Notated faithfully by your humble, and preserved for posterity!”

 _Faithfully, eh? A likely story._ And the Scribe was sure there was something they ought to mention about the Conqueror, though at the moment they couldn’t remember what it was.

“…What posterity?” they asked instead.

“I beg pardon, did you mutter something?”

“Yes. What posterity?” they repeated, loudly and with more enunciation. “We have no children, neither your kind nor mine. Before the sundering, we rarely allowed even the Gelfling we’d taught to read in here. I doubt you’re any less jealous of our treasures now. Most of the other races don’t read at all, except the Gruenak, and you wouldn’t let them inside even if your glorified killers _weren’t_ busy driving them from their homelands. Meanwhile you yourselves claim to be eternal, which is unproven, but leave that aside. So then…what posterity? To whom will you bequeath all this?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” retorted SkekOk, but they didn’t seem to have anything to follow that up with. “Well, who knows what’s to come. Better to have it all down regardless. And surely our—treasures deserve our care for their own sakes. Besides, who are _your_ twirly little swirls for, really? Are they ever reread?”

“Mostly not, no. The dream-records, sometimes, when necessary for divinations. As for the rest…I’m afraid the others prefer to forget, whenever they can. The truths of our past are painful and…a bit sordid.”

“Mm, yes. That’s why truth always needs a good polish.” The Scroll-Keeper stopped, primly adjusting the frontmost of their row of spectacles. “I’m—not sure I’d entirely mind if you _could_ come to see the library again, you know. If that were possible. Of course it’s not,” they added hastily. “Inconceivable. Blasphemy. But you’d at least show some appreciation…I think. More than most of these benighted idiots, anyway.”

UrAc tapped their staff, gazing all around.

“Well,” they said laconically, “I don’t miss you, but I do miss these books.”

SkekOk nodded sagely and began walking again. “Ah. Now, this pleases me.”

“Does it—?” the Scribe queried, with a raised eyebrow. “I find that surprising.”

“You shouldn’t,” scoffed the Scroll-Keeper. “Don’t you remember us better than that? We were always gladder to hear the sentiment put that way, than the other way round. “

* * *

The Chanter could not hear or speak or sing, and as a result of this, wasn’t sure they were actually alive. They were caught within a narrow column of blinding light that they somehow instinctively knew to be their prison. Prismatic refractions lanced out at them every way they turned, forming a sharp dazzling warning to stay well back from the edges.

It might be that they’d died and were now awaiting some kind of judgment—a thought that pierced their soul with grief. The name they’d borne since their Awakening was hopelessly broken, and the Ones Who Wait beyond might not recognize them at all in their sorry state. They wouldn’t know UrSol was one of them; they might consider them unworthy even of judgment, just some minor pest-entity that had blindly wandered into this plane and gotten stuck, and leave them here in nothingness forever.

Then a slight shadow fell, and an immense cruel face appeared from far above to scrutinize them. They couldn’t see its particulars because of the glare, but there was a hint of green glow from a narrowing pair of eyes. In desperation they reached up towards it to wave and gesticulate, their mouth mutely opening and shutting, hoping that they might at least be perceived as a sentient thing.

_MMmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmmhhhhhmmmm…trap is full, we seem to have caught a bug. What shall we do with it?_

It wasn’t a voice precisely, more a mental impression of words. But the tone was unmistakably amused regardless. _Chanter has no suggestions, it seems. Perhaps it no longer cares. Fine. Am happy to make the hard decisions. I always have._

UrSol tried to think at it, the way it was thinking at them. _No, no—don’t you understand, you fool—you kill me, you kill us!_

 _Oh, don’t worry. No killing. We are not_ stupid _like HakHom. No, tiny me…Chanter is perfect right where is, useless and silent._ A giant talon poked inside, made a little stirring motion, as though it were thinking about swirling UrSol around in a circle.

 _Why must you always talk like that, then?_ UrSol burst out in sudden, impotent frustration. _You do make us_ sound _stupid._

 _Being stupid is impediment,_ came the wry reply. _But_ seeming _stupid can be advantage. Do not pretend surprise; we were always playing a part. Hid our heart from all, and so protected it, yes? Valuable skill, where I am now. We will survive. All Chamberlain asks is that Chanter stay out of way, as has always done._

The menacing hand covered the top of the light-column and began to press downward.

_And no squawking, hmm? Chanter’s music has never caused anything but trouble._

UrSol knew then that if they could make just one sound, the smallest sound, that would break open the column and free them to do—something; but it appeared that the chance to make that choice had already come and gone. Without even a first warning, to say nothing of a last.

* * *

UrNol had a personal prophecy they’d begged UrAc to burn the calligraph of because it so tormented them, but the Scribe, being the Scribe, had refused. Neither of them were _fond_ of unedifying words. Both always listened with half an ear, at best, when one of the travelers of the UrRu (especially UrGoh) was telling one of their more distasteful stories of the outside world’s affairs. But the Scribe took those words down as fully and patiently as they did all other words of substance. It was their duty. And their philosophy held that a thing once written could never really be erased, that it was folly to try. Alas, they believed this doubly true of prophecies.

From the travelers’ tales of the Castle and its…lords, the Herbalist knew their dark half was currently styling themselves SkekNa the Major-Domo, chief and director of all servants. Under the Ritual-Master’s direction they arranged every scrap of pomp for the Empire’s high occasions, and under the Chamberlain’s circulating gaze they organized its everyday routines and customs as well. And that could definitely have turned out worse. Far better than having the Conqueror or the Emperor on one’s individual conscience, for example.

But from the prophecy, UrNol knew that someday SkekNa would bear another title: _Slave-Master_.

In their UrRu form, the desire to hurt or oppress a living thing couldn’t be further from UrNol’s heart. On the contrary, they exulted in communing with nearly everything they could touch on Thra, and most especially the tender children of the soil. They conversed with herbs, gossiped with flowers, sought the advice of trees, even tried to have reasonable words with weeds. And the Podlings, who might literally be the descendants of the giant plants whose seed-pods they still lived in, were particularly dear to the Herbalist.

So dreams of Podlings in clanking chains, listless and mirthless and empty-eyed—in other words, no longer Podlings at all—were a recurrent source of agony that crystals, chants, and standing stones could only ward off for so long. They despised hearing that voice they knew as their own even though they never used it, barking commands and ordering floggings. They dreaded seeing the strips of the lash dance in front of their eyes when they themselves were wielding it, the welts rising on bare sweating skin. They hated the ringing sound of the strange metal pincer that had somehow replaced one of their hands as it went to seize a hapless ear or wrist. But the supreme atrocity was the choir.

Podling music was some of the most beautiful on Thra precisely because of its joyous idiosyncrasy. Its improvised flights had a path both logical and random, like the ancient rules that governed the growth pattern of a tree and the absolutely unique arrangement of limbs that nonetheless resulted. Podlings were not a patch that ever needed pruning. They knew what they wanted to be and how to be it. Yet here was that—thing, that SkekNa, suddenly fancying itself a musician? And presuming to “tune” the collective voice of its slave-singers by mutilation and attrition…sometimes fatal attrition. It was an abomination against everything Podlings had ever meant, a wound not just to every single captive but to the spirit of an entire people.

The music? …Wasn’t terrible, precisely. Though UrNol would never have admitted as much, it even had a chilling majesty to it. But it didn’t fit naturally into the Podling idiom, or any other idiom of Thra. It was some mishmash of dim Homeworld memories and the twisted interpretation Skeksis minds imposed on those memories. It sounded exactly like what it was: forced. And UrNol always perceived a telltale reverberation in its fading echoes, one that so plainly expressed the revulsion and despair of the very Crystal itself. How could the Slave-Master not hear it?

Or _did_ they hear it, and consider it part of the artistic effect?

In the dream, UrNol always internally begged their dark half to stop, just stop—at least stop the skin-crawling music for Thra’s sweet sake. But that, SkekNa assuredly never heard.

* * *

UrAmaj’s nightmare was culinary in nature, which was entirely in character for them. Their uncomplicated spirit rarely spent much energy on anything else. But what few bad dreams they had _usually_ revolved around niceties so exacting that almost no one else on Thra would even understand what the matter was. Three grains too many of this spice. A sprig of something that couldn’t be harvested under the propitious star needed, because of the weather. That was the stuff of a haunted night for the Cook.

…Or UrNol saying that something just didn’t taste right, but they couldn’t tell what. Those were the worst.

This, however, was in a category all its own. Even within the fuzziness of dream-memory, the Cook was fairly certain they’d never had to feed a Skeksis. Or an UrSkek. And they’d definitely never had to feed both at the same table. Surely their horoscope must have fallen into some terrible misalignment for this to come about, and with no prior notice.

UrSkeks didn’t even consume material food—UrAmaj keenly recalled that much. That was why nobody had called them “the Cook” before the sundering. Their former work had to do with energy centers within a sentient form, and the different intakes and outflows required to keep those centers in balance. That knowledge did transfer somewhat, because after all, plants—along with the milks, nectars, mild digestive fluids, and eggs that UrAmaj could sometimes persuade creatures in the area to give them, in exchange for other food—were just life-energy committed to another sort of matrix.

But UrAmaj had _no_ idea how they, in their ungainly present form, were supposed to draw together the chthonic and heavenly energies in enough quantity to sate their alien guest. So their two left hands were frantically working out those calculations on a three-axis abacus (a device much easier for non-fleshly beings to manipulate, but that was the least of the Cook’s woes now). At least UrSkeks were patient creatures. This one sat, or rather floated by the table with a radiantly untroubled countenance. Somehow, though, that made things even worse. UrAmaj was sorry to keep such a kind being waiting, and…it looked so happy.

The Cook couldn’t even remember what being that happy felt like. In hundreds of trine, their very finest meals had never brought such peace to the faces of the UrRu. That awareness made their heart ache.

Then there was the Skeksis, who was enormous, though UrAmaj suspected some of that might be padded clothing. There, sheer _physical_ quantity was the problem, and the grotesque thing just kept squawking “More food! More food!”

Even after the Cook put down the abacus and just walked the entire cauldron of half-finished stew out of the kitchen, to set in front of the drooling monster, it continued to abuse their ears. Only now the cry became, “Some Cook! Such tasteless swill. I’m the real chef here. I’ll show you, I’ll show you…”

And then it started just throwing things into the cauldron. ( _Their._ Cauldron.) Living things. Krollwigs and crawlies. Gridits and Nebrie grubs. The hisses and screeches soon overwhelmed the burble of the still-cooking broth. UrAmaj moaned and turned back toward the kitchen again. Maybe if they brought out every fruit and vegetable in the pantry _and_ the cellar, that would be enough? Or at least, it might distract that savage long enough to take away the cauldron again, or tip it over? But somehow or other this hideousness had to stop, right now.

They spared their neglected UrSkek guest a worried glance as they went past. But it was still wreathed in perfect serenity—and all at once the Cook realized, that was because it was dead. So of course it could be happy. It didn’t have to deal with any of this.

UrAmaj half-loped, half-hopped into the kitchen as fast as they could, pulling out the front of their apron to serve as an impromptu pocket and sliding an entire shelf’s worth of greens and bulbs into it at once. But a scream on an entirely different order of volume and timbre brought them loping right back outside again, strewing vegetables all over, only to watch in terror as the Skeksis laughingly plunged a Gelfling boy—clothes on, and yelling for his mother—into the stew.

The Cook screamed themselves then; and as they screamed on and on, the cauldron boiled over and started disgorging a flood of liquid offal into the commons of the Mystic village. There was no end to it. It was thick and red, and this red was not from Aerin bark, and there were so many bones and skulls of different shapes and sizes in it as well.

Just… _so_ many bones.

* * *

The Weaver’s dream was beautiful, and that was exactly the trouble with it.

Radha had been a sweet, middle-aged Gelfling, with a dark lovely face painted in the shades of the three suns. She was missing a finger on her right hand, but that hadn’t stopped her from becoming the most skillful weaver and garment-maker on the Sifan coast, so she always wore dresses whose fabrics were shot with the very light of the stars themselves, and carried the shapes of the ocean waves whenever the faintest breeze stirred them.

UrUtt had been extremely young, still learning the terrestrial version of their craft, and they asked to study at Radha’s side. The Gelfling looked a little disconcerted when the UrRu explained that their religious beliefs forbade them the use of scissors and they could only chew fibers apart with their teeth; but then she said she and UrUtt would figure out a new technique together, and so they did.

Radha’s household was a bustling one—yet it too figured out a technique for maneuvering its controlled chaos around the large, strange, long-tailed being coiled up at the loom in their cozy greatroom. Radha created an original bobbin lace pattern that she said was inspired by the graceful motions of the Weaver’s four arms; sometimes UrUtt would hold the baby girl or the toddler boy and sing to them, while they watched Radha demonstrate something; and hot tea was always brewing, ready to warm any fingers that might feel stiff in the drafty cold.

They lived among Radha’s clade for a mere trine, but somehow it felt like forever, and somehow when they left, it felt like they were having to leave their family. The children cried and Radha did too, though she smiled and sniffled most of it back, and she and UrUtt gave each other gifts from their craft. To this day, the Weaver had the carrying-bag Radha had made them on a shelf in their quarters. Each ornament on it carried a meaning they’d never forgotten: every bead or embroidery represented one of the children, or one of the ancestor trees by the village, or a song one of them had taught the other, or one of the traditional sacred patterns UrUtt had mastered under Radha’s tutelage. For their part, UrUtt had given Radha a knitted winter cap with just a _little_ of Thra’s breath braided into it, such that it could warm the entire body even in the cruelest winds.

Radha had been dead for hundreds of trine now, along with her children and her children’s children. UrUtt didn’t know if her village or clade was still there on the coast, or still alive at all. When they tried now and again to bring it up, the other Mystics said that was the problem with making too close a friend among the short-lived Thra-kind…one more reason why it was better to just stay in the village. And they knew the others were right about that; such selfish personal attachments were always an invitation to pain, and it was their own fault for forgetting who and what they were.

That was what made the dream as terrible as it was wonderful—even though it consisted of nothing more than lacemaking and tea, and chitchat about the 8-trine-old having to memorize the prayers for her second-name ceremony, and home remedies for chapped hands, and the (large) differences between UrRu and Gelfling food.

When UrUtt woke, it was to find themselves weeping.

* * *

UrTih was floating along a beach at night, collecting shells with the shining fingers of an UrSkek, examining and then carefully placing each one in a basket the Podlings had kindly woven for them (said basket _being_ almost the size of a Podling). And that seemed a little…off, because this didn’t look like any of Thra’s beaches. UrTih, or TekTih, or whoever they were, wasn’t sure exactly why that was a problem. They only knew that it was one, if a minor one. The basket was fine and sturdy, and the shells were fascinatingly varied, and the beach was a pretty blue-sand one. It might have been out in the YmMr cluster or thereabouts, going by the general arrangement of the constellations. If it was YmMr, ShodYod must be around here somewhere, perhaps on top of that dormant volcano in the distance; and they would know which planet this was exactly, because they always did. But there was no hurry, not for an immortal.

A chittering noise from inside the basket drew their attention, and they peered inside, their own tall forehead and branching hair illuminating its dark interior. They drew out a segmented shell and frowned at it. Why was it wiggling? Then they turned it sideways and saw to their vague horror that it wasn’t empty. There was a partial creature inside of it—so partial, in fact, that it shouldn’t be alive at all, little more than a couple stringy legs and a lower digestive tract, and yet it was still writhing in what seemed like agony.

They didn’t know what to do with the poor thing. They didn’t have any equipment with them to fix something like this. It shouldn’t even be alive _to_ fix. They placed it sadly and curiously back on the sand, where its impossible motions flipped it this way and that.

Suddenly the fearful realization struck that if they’d put _this_ shell in their basket without seeing anything alive in there, they might have made the same mistake with some of the others, so they began fishing through all the shells, searching for signs of motion. Yes, here they were, so many of them: unmissable yet clearly missed, sliding around and on top of each other, occasionally catching the probing UrSkek fingers in a pincer or a limb joint. All mutilated, all moving in a way that seemed like a kind of plea, but for what? For healing? For a mercy-stroke?

They began laying all the torn creatures out on the sand, and the luckless things crawled together into a mass, and then they were _sticking_ together somehow, growing and turning into some kind of larger, aggregate creature, some enormous scuttling crustacean. Were they meant to do that? Although in places it resembled certain nonapods of their own world, this wasn’t a lifeform they could ever, ever remember encountering. Not in all their ages and light-years of voyaging.

And then the creature had eyes, glowing eyes, and those eyes were staring out unblinking with an angry half-sentience, and this thing was silently blaming UrTih (or TekTih, or whoever) for…its existing. It had not _wanted_ to exist, and now it was going to have its vengeance on the Scientist/Alchemist—who couldn’t understand how any of this had happened at all, and vainly longed to explain that whatever they’d done to make it happen, it was an accident and they were sorry…

* * *

The Monk’s life as UrRu had been spent largely in mute protest against the idea that they should wear a fleshly body at all, far less _this_ absurd jumble of deficits and superfluities with a made-up name. It was constantly making degrading demands—eat this, excrete that, lie down, get up; if it wasn’t covering over with something and curling up to shiver in the cold, then it was shedding something and jumping in freshwater to wash off its saltwater in the heat. Made meditating for more than a day or two at a time nearly _impossible_. Even the far simpler duties an UrSkek must perform to maintain their envelope of identity had always galled them a bit, but the Monk would have given anything to go back to those annoyances now.

So it was with a burning regret and sorrow that UrSen watched the Wanderer and the Seeker walk hand in hand toward their reunion, under the gentle glow of a forgiving Crystal. That skull-headed lizard-beast of UrGoh’s was revolting to look at, even less pleasant to contemplate. Yet it did have one redeeming quality every other of its kind lacked: a willingness to cease existing.

If only UrSen dared hope that _other_ vile lizard-beast could ever come around to the same wisdom.

There on the floor of the Crystal Chamber, the Wanderer and the Seeker turned toward the braziers on either side of them, each drawing out of theirs a triangular blade. The Monk’s breath caught, and they wondered anxiously if it was a change of plan, if the two halves were going to duel to the death instead—or if the reunion itself demanded some cruel sacrifice of self-impalement. Instead, the pair raised the two swords toward each other and joined them into a single gleaming instrument, which radiated in the very same tone and light as the Crystal.

“Truth is the weapon,” called the Seeker, in an unusually clear voice. “Fear is the enemy,” replied the Wanderer without hesitation.

“Heresy,” said a sea of whispers in UrSen’s ears.

The unpleasant but distantly-familiar emotion of envy visited the Monk then. They wanted a suicidal Skeksis. It was the _other’s_ fault that they couldn’t lay down on this bright altar too, and finally make something of themselves. The _other_ clung to life beyond all reason, by any means necessary. And why? It didn’t have one feature worth preserving. It thought the baubles and exotica it hoarded were a personality. It thought the fleeting whims of the flesh were meaning. And it had always refused to even think about letting its vanities go—at least, not till the Monk could give them some logical answer to _why they should_ , and _what they would receive in return,_ that probably didn’t exist.

Or if it existed, the Monk had never succeeded in finding it for either of them. That was the cruelest irony. In all their trine of contemplation and self-denial, they’d come to know the shape of the yearning void within them in exquisite detail…but of what might ever possibly fill it, almost nothing.

Their hands went to their face and ears and they prayed as they often did, in their darkest dreams and emptiest waking hours: “Die. Rot. Be dust. Be cursed. Sicken. Wither and vanish.”

* * *

It was the only time UrYod had yelled at anyone in their life, and because it was the only time, it qualified as the sort of trauma that could come back now and again, when waking unhappiness followed them into sleep.

“ _I taught_ you this art,” they’d reminded Aughra, pointing a reproving finger at her. “This is how you use my learning?”

Mother Aughra drew herself up to full height, which hadn’t been very much even before great age squashed her frame—but it did put her eye-to-eye with the Numerologist, whose younger body had only partly folded into what would gradually become the characteristic Mystic hunch.

“Not your learning anymore,” she huffed. At least she had the good grace to feel defensive. “Once given, it belongs to both, just as it will belong to those I pass it on to.”

“Nonetheless.” UrYod leafed through the charts on the table, increasingly agitated, finding more and more that had never been intended for the eyes of anyone on Thra. “I distinctly remember teaching you that a person’s stars are _only_ to be read with their own consent.”

“Hmph. And how would Aughra seek the consent of ShodYod?”

“You can’t. That’s why you should not have done it.”

“You are offended on behalf of the dead, but do the dead take offense?”

Her words struck them to the very heart. “We aren’t _dead_ ,” the Numerologist lowed.

“Not dead? Then I am speaking with ShodYod? Could ask consent right now?”

“Why are you doing this?” The Numerologist began rolling up papers, more as a release of nervous energy than anything else. It was very plain from her face that she’d already seen everything. All of it.

“Just asking questions of teacher. First question, who _is_ teacher?” The witch picked up a concordance and traced a stubby finger along its meandering path. “You see the calculations. There _is_ no UrYod to cast the stars of. Aughra made out the triangle of that name, like you showed me. Combined it with your…birthdate. Day of the sundering, hm? Brought in your mineral affinities, which Aughra saw in the sand-painting UrZah did for you. Should have gotten your life-path for the past trine, and look. Nothing but gibberish. Tried it on SkekShod—same thing. Either Aughra is missing something, or when Numerologist is casting their own stars, they are _not_ casting the stars of UrYod. So.” She put it down with a dismissive thump. “Which is it? Is birthdate wrong?”

UrYod continued putting things away, their cheeks full of unfamiliar and uncomfortable warmth, but the Mother of Thra was having none of it and followed them from desk to cubby to drawing-table and back, repeating: “Is it? Isn’t it? Wrong birthdate? Is that what Aughra missed? The birthdate? Wrong or right? Right or wrong? It’s one or the other! No third choice, Mystic! Tell Aughra which.”

“Yes, wrong birthdate.”

“Fizzgig didn’t steal your tongue, good! What about the name? The name? Right or wrong name? It _is_ still ShodYod’s stars you cast every day, isn’t it? Then I was right to switch over to that, just don’t have the right birthdate! —Answer my question or give me back my charts! Worked hard on those.” She made a sudden grab for them, which led to a not-terribly-dignified struggle of eight and a half fingers versus sixteen. The paper began to tear, causing them both to reflexively freeze.

“Yes, ShodYod,” the Numerologist finally answered in vexation. “Or—it starts with ShodYod…”

“And _then_ you add UrYod?”

“No.” Their voice trembled. Aughra stared at them. Apparently she hadn’t been expecting any emotion to attach to this. Which was absurd, but then UrYod knew from prior, more minor disagreements that she honestly thought both UrRu and UrSkeks were mysterious for the sheer fun of it.

“Tell me,” she said, simply, and far more gently. “Your secrets have a way of changing my world, my friend. And then?”

“And then,” stammered UrYod. “And then…please, if I tell you, _will_ you leave it alone? Stop trying to cast our stars?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Aughra will leave casting Mystic stars to Mystics.”

The Numerologist sighed. “Very well. And then…I _subtract_ …SkekShod.”

Aughra gave that some cogitation. She counted on her fingertips, then on her knuckles, then the toes of one foot.

“That shouldn’t even work,” she said at last. “Mathematically.”

“I know!” UrYod spread their hands out helplessly. “But mathematically, it does.”

“So…mathematically…” She sat down on a stool and did a bit more counting, then shook her thick curls. “There _is_ no UrYod, or, no UrYod that the stars see…only…the space where SkekShod _isn’t_?”

She studied the Numerologist, peering at them as though through one of their telescopes. “That what it sums out to?”

“I—suppose?”

“Teacher isn’t supposed to answer with questioning voice,” she grumbled. “None of this makes sense. Skeksis aren’t enough to deal with? Why do Mystics have to be so strange too? Never mind, I know you’re not going to answer _that_!”

The Numerologist would have liked to protest, but Mother Aughra snatched a couple of the papers out of UrYod’s hands and started to tear them up in disgust.

“Gibberish! Look at all this! _You_ are gibberish, Numerologist. You are—what, a subtraction? A lack? How is that possible? Who are you? Do you even know?”

All at once UrYod heard themselves shouting, though it sounded and felt so far away—as if someone else were doing it. Someone who wasn’t a subtraction and a lack.

“No! We _don’t_ know!” they howled, their neck stretching out to startle Aughra off her perch. They lumbered forward as she scrambled backward, toward the mouth of the cave that had served as UrYod’s first observatory. “We know nothing anymore! Now _please_ go away and stop asking things! Why do you want to talk about this? Why do you think we want to talk about this? What do you think I’m not giving you? _You_ are Thra, Thra did this, you tell _me_ why!”

“Aughra—will come back at a later time,” the witch announced, shaken but determined to make a stately exit at walking speed.

 _“Aughra will come back at a much later time!”_ bellowed the Numerologist. “Perhaps when she’s learned to leave the dead in _peace_!”

“Fine!” Aughra yelped. “—Fine, much later. Keep the gibberish if you want, I don’t need it—good night, UrYod, or…whoever…”

She did still leave at a walk, but it was a fairly brisk one.

* * *

UrMa shivered for the very first time, and that intrigued and frightened them in equal measure. This bizarre…conveyance they found themselves in now was mostly, increasingly under their control, or at least it was beginning to feel like it might become so. But every so often it still did something that UrMa (who didn’t yet use that name, they were only “Ma,” and hadn’t fully convinced themselves of that much) could not fathom the purpose of.

This was another of those: an odd, low-frequency sound that rippled all through their framework and the raw, naked flesh that barely clothed it. Not exactly painful, but not entirely pleasant either. In another circumstance they might have enjoyed exploring the novelty. They knew that they were old, though at the moment they also felt extremely young, and that they were _usually_ very hard to surprise. But today had already been…surprising enough on a number of fronts.

The thing in their mouth— _tongue_ , that was the term among beings that had them, it was a muscle if memory served—had also begun to behave itself a little. It wouldn’t form even a fraction of the sounds needed for fluent UrSkek, but it could croak a bit of Gelfling. Perhaps that, at least, would become passable with time. Right now, every word took an effort, and Ma and their companions were reduced to infant utterances, only their liquid glances at each other betraying the hurt perplexity of a thwarted higher intelligence.

“What…is?” Ma asked of their dearest one, in a low cooing sort of voice. The other cocked their long head questioningly, and Ma did their best to repeat the performance, shaking their shoulders and head.

“Cold,” said Su, who was after all an exobiologist. (Even on this, their birth-day, their shortish brown hair was already a spiky mess. When UrMa in their waking mind recalled it, it always gave them a little glow of fondness.)

“Shi-ve-ring,” they added, carefully forming each syllable, “for cold.”

“ _This_ —is cold?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t…like it,” was Ma’s verdict.

“Don’t like it, no,” agreed Su, with a threadbare but sympathetic smile. “Here.” They reached out to Ma, who huddled close, and with their other arms gestured for the rest. The sixteen of them obediently made themselves into a damp bundle of knots, sighing in relief as the shared body heat rapidly began its work.

The rain continued to fall outside. They were all ensconced for at least the next little while, if not overnight, in an inconspicuous niche created by the bed of a long-dried stream and the tangle-rooted trees that had subsequently claimed its banks and bottom. It was a cramped, dirty shelter, but better that than continuing vainly to stagger through the mud and the…cold. Ma was relatively sure that the _things_ at the Castle, its new masters evidently, would not be able to see through the branches and rain to spy on them here. Even if they did find the telescope and remember that it was for using, not destroying.

When all this had actually happened so many hundreds of trine ago, fear and shame (the one far better and more immediately explained than the other) had been so dominating Ma’s newborn limbic system that they literally couldn’t register any other emotions. But tonight, as always when they dreamed back to this time, UrMa remembered only the closeness and warmth of all sixteen survivors together, and the steadiness of UrSu’s arms and breath. Disagreements, partings, existential dilemmas, even the full realization of who the Skeksis were and what it meant, were all in the unsuspected and unexamined future. Confusion and dismay were soon soothed by an all-too-brief time of genuine…innocence. And so against all logic, it was one of their most comforting memories.

When the Peacemaker woke, they found themselves bizarrely wishing they could think of some excuse for their all doing exactly that again—hiding together away from the rain, naked and at least pretending to be afraid. UrGoh, already easy to pick out of the crowd because of their night-colored skin, had been curled up against UrMa’s lower legs. UrMa had been leaning against UrSu’s chest, and UrSu had had a hand on each of them. Surely if they were to be arranged like that again now, there’d be some kind of magic to plumb in it? Some geomantic resonance, between that moment and this?

Something that could remind them of how they were all one once, and could always choose to be one again if they only wanted?

* * *

For the most part UrIm the Healer was quite content to live as though their dark half didn’t exist, or at least as though their existences didn’t relate in any way to each other. Occasionally SkekUng did make this difficult by getting themselves wounded in battle. Those wounds were usually minor, however, as one might well enough expect from a creature that spent its days proving its courage against the smaller and weaker.

UngIm had always had a bit of a temper for an UrSkek; when tending their patients, they seemed to channel the very essence of love itself, but the rest of the time they could be quick to assume insult and even quicker to act on the assumption. SkekUng had inherited all of that temper, apparently—then nursed it to a truly overweening size on the nutritious milk of resentment. That was probably why they were now the Emperor’s Enforcer, not so much seizing lands for the Skeksis as making sure that they stayed seized. UrIm heard stories about it sometimes. Occasionally they got bits and pieces of their counterpart’s doings from divinations and dreams as well. Their strongest reaction was always relief, gratitude, that they weren’t being dragged along for any of that. Almost all the true knowledge of healing had stayed with UrIm, which meant that SkekUng did _not_ have it at their disposal as yet another technical advantage for their swarming troops.

But there’d been one time the Healer _had_ been sorry not to be able to share their arts with their dark half, and sometimes it came back in the night. They felt and saw themselves to be in that gruesome Skeksis armor, and they were tearing off a ridiculously heavy helmet to see better, leaning down on one knee to examine a Gelfling girl just barely old enough to leave home. “The poison’s acting quickly,” they heard themselves snarl to their attendants. “She saw their forces. I have to know what she knows! Where’s that stinking Grottan? Get them over here!”

The girl was declining rapidly. Her skin had already turned a deeply unpleasant shade of mottled red, and the swelling around the many weeping Arathim bites distorted the shape of her limbs and strained at the edges of her clothing. “You will live,” the Enforcer was exhorting her desperately, and they even picked up her tiny hand with their ugly talons and awkwardly patted it, then felt around for a pulse. “Stay with me. Look at me. You must live.” It was all so pathetically, haplessly inadequate, one could almost sympathize with the creature. Almost.

But what haunted the Healer’s slumber ever after was the way the girl looked back at SkekUng. She was dazed, but not too dazed to recognize a Lord of the Crystal—and so heart-achingly awed and thankful to find them kneeling at her side. She really thought it was her meaningless peasant life that the Enforcer cared about, not the information locked in her fading brain.

If UrIm had really been there, it would have been true.

And she would have lived.

But they weren’t there, and couldn’t be. They even _tried_ to impart the knowledge, just that one time, across the chasm of their fractured self—but if SkekUng sensed any of their thoughts, they gave no sign. UrIm had to watch her die, needlessly, and the only part of it that wasn’t utterly hideous was the carrion comfort of knowing that her illusions of mattering to the Skeksis would remain intact. She was able to take them with her into the tomb.

That did put her in company with an uncomfortably large number of other Gelfling.

* * *

UrSu stood again at the same precipice, bathed in light and power, clothed in glory.

It terrified them, not just because they no longer trusted themselves with power, but because they were a scientist and metaphysician, and they knew that some light neither illuminated nor healed. This particular frequency, for example, which shone up in lurid violet from vein-shaped cracks in the deep skin of Thra, was a slow-acting poison, a deceiver that would always end up extracting more life than it promised or (for a little while) gave.

The Emperor knew that as well. They were evil, not idiotic. But to them, this was a bold gamble waged against time. They would take the poison, use the poison to preserve their reign—in whatever shambling, ignominious form it would hold together—till the day at last came when they could seize the true, healing light. On that day they would cure themselves and all the Skeksis of their afflictions and stigmata in a single stroke. Then they’d remove the contagion from the lands as well, at whatever speed the children of Thra chose to _earn_ that mercy by coming to heel. And in this way, everything would gradually be returned to unsullied and eternal magnificence.

Failure in such a supremely hazardous venture would exact a horrific price, yes; but since no failure was acceptable in any case, they saw scant reason to cower beneath useless half-measures. And the victory, oh—would be a victory over _everything_ , over death, over Homeworld’s scorn and rejection, over literal Ages of setbacks and restarts. It would be an unprecedented cheating of cruel entropy itself. And entropy would never see it coming. In its cosmic arrogance, it would surely never expect grubby upstarts like the Skeksis to use its own powers to defeat it.

Even those stupid Mystics would of necessity be brought along for the ride, even if they never had the decency to thank SkekSo for it.

UrGoh apparently thought this kind of logic could be argued down. The Master knew better. They’d been personally lured into its grasp far too many times. It, too, was a deceitful and slow-acting poison. SkekSo might delude themselves they could outrace fate, but in the Darkening they’d at last embraced a calamity beyond even old SoSu’s power to contain. UrSu certainly couldn’t hope to absorb or transmute it. If anything, it would be the opposite. Contact was infection, infection was death.

And the infection was further along than UrGoh, or anyone, realized.

UrSu knew it only because it was their own talons that held the Emperor’s staff in these dreams, that beckoned tendrils of the Darkening’s lethal radiation into its crystal while the severed conscience looked miserably on. It was their own dark-robed arm carrying a necrotic sore that had refused to close for a full trine, and still remained as an angry little scab on that of the UrRu counterpart; their own wheezing that woke both halves in the middle of the night. Sometimes UrSu even thought they saw a tinge of violet in their sympathetic sputum, but they dared not ask UrIm for a second opinion. If they asked, then they’d have to explain—that they were _either_ having hideous delusions, or watching themselves painstakingly defile and murder not just themselves, but the Crystal and all Thra.

And then where did it go? Mystics weren’t assertive beings. They’d want to be told what to do. (The few with an independent streak rarely came home anymore, which, although it was saddening, did help keep things on an even keel.) But how was the wise Master ever to know what they should do about…the wise Master? No, no scenario from there was bearable—not their continuing unearned trust, not their wise abandonment, not their frightened paralysis.

Even if this had all once been reversible by the “true unity,” surely it wasn’t anymore.

The Emperor and the Master shared these night-tortures. It was the arena for their endless contest. Each had long since realized that the other was there by choice, to send their messages. UrSu reminded SkekSo—in visual, tactile detail—of all the ways they could end this if they chose, jumping, drowning, the blade, the rope, or just the sheer willing of death. Sometimes they warned SkekSo of natural consequences to actions as well, though whether that was in the dim hope of dissuasion or a sheer desire to inflict punishment, neither knew. And so in their dreams the Emperor would find themselves literally falling apart, tossing in bed from fevers and sweats, bone shearing away from bone, lurid purple mucus splitting open skin. Sometimes when standing on their precipice they would fall straight into the arms of the Darkening, and be carried along the corrosive flows of violet magma into the planet’s fiery depths to burn forever.

SkekSo was not the kind of monster to be outdone. They answered UrSu’s threats with the taunts that only a self knows to inflict on itself. Both halves knew SkekSo could never bring themselves to kill or even injure UrSu, and visions of the punishment they casually visited on lesser beings became dulling instead of shocking if too often repeated. But a dream of a grand banquet marking the subdual of some new tribe, with Gelfling nobles and peasantry toasting the Skeksis reign and their Emperor’s immortal health? Of jeweled rivers of tithes and tributes streaming into the Castle from every corner of Thra? Of looking through the balcony telescope and spotting the Conqueror and the General riding home in triumph, with the heads of the defiant impaled over the brightly-colored pennants on their carriage lamp-posts? Of all SkekSo’s _success_?

That was the proper way to serve peeping Mystics who couldn’t keep themselves from following the Emperor to the Darkening’s cradle _yet again_ , and for what? To spy, and carp, and not help even a little.

If UrSu was so eager to visit, they could stay for the full tour.

* * *

GraGoh was one of the UrSkeks most used to being rebuked, and arguably, they’d become more inured to it than they should have. But this was a worse case than usual, and their long fingers twined and knotted fretfully as SoSu took careful measurements and made thorough examinations: smelling soil, picking up the small glowing things that made their home in the brush and grass that the two of them hovered over, submerging a crystal in the water of the pond and listening to the changes to its vibrations after it was brought back up.

“No, I’m sorry,” their elder and mentor said at last. “It can’t stay here. It’s an invasive species in this ecology.”

“What if we put it in some kind of containment field?” GraGoh had been holding back their words with great difficulty, and now, despite their best intentions, they blurted them out helplessly. “A null-well or something? Why can’t we do that?”

“You know why not,” returned SoSu, floating upward toward the ridge, from which the entire plain of Skarith, especially the part immediately encircling the Castle, could easily be observed. GraGoh gave the mountainous, splendidly-flowering century tree they had come to think of as a friend a last mournful glance and reluctantly followed.

The elder gestured back down toward the little thicket they’d just left. “Look at those leylines. Already altered in a way the pollinators are finding it very hard to compensate for. Any effective containment would have to surround the roots as well, and as you can see, the tree _has_ to draw on the life of an entire network to feed itself. Apologies, Explorer. But I’m afraid you must take it back where you found it, before the damage spreads even further.”

GraGoh could feel their energy centers sinking one into the other in a chain of dismay. “But that same need is what will probably kill it if we try to move it now,” they argued desperately, all the time wondering to themselves, _Why couldn’t the Master have said all this back when they_ first _found out?_ “And the Noggies and firbits that have flourished with it as a habitat, how many of them will die too? I made the mistake, the consequences should fall on me, not on Yuripi. All it did was agree to my adventure. Please, it was only a sapling, it couldn’t have known.”

“Sweetest friend, I’m afraid some consequences can’t be contained solely to their source either.” SoSu spoke very gently, bowing their effulgent head (though to GraGoh’s momentarily biased perceptions, it seemed a somewhat pro-forma gesture). “It gives me great sorrow that Yuripi must suffer this risk, through no fault of its own. We’ll do our best to provide it with the nourishment that will give it the best possible odds of surviving the journey. But you must understand, what for you is a friend and a precious prize—”

GraGoh began, “Not a _prize_ , SoSu—”

The elder held up a hand for silence. “That’s enough. What for you is a friend, then. But for most of the organisms hereabouts, it is a disease. Contact is infection, infection is death. We have to consider the welfare of the whole.”

“That is what Homeworld said of _us_ ,” GraGoh said bitterly.

SoSu gave them a swift, stern glance. “And Homeworld was correct.”

“And then Homeworld forced us to come _here_. How can we speak of invasive species?”

“We’ve been over this, GraGoh. Homeworld can’t look after all the realms of the Crystal, only its own. Remember that we’ve been set as stewards over this one; and we will be judged by how it fares. Are you saying you no longer wish to return to Homeworld? Never to see our kin, our suns, our shores again?”

Something was wrong here, the Explorer knew something was wrong. But they couldn’t put a finger on what it was yet. “No…no, of course I—want to go home, SoSu. I want us all…to be able to go home. As soon as the Conjunction comes.”

They clasped their hands around their upper arms, the way the Gelfling often did when they were sad, and SoSu at once came over to enfold those same arms in their own. Warmth spread through the touch of the two envelopes, and seeped from there into their cores. On Thra, a world whose Crystal tolerated them only warily, all any of the UrSkeks had to lean on for comfort was each other.

“I am sorry,” SoSu whispered. “I _am_ sorry, my friend. But sometimes there’s just no other way…”

When SkekGra woke up and realized it was a good thousand trine too late to save poor Yuripi, it was still the middle of the night. But their stomach was growling so fiercely that they clearly had no chance of falling asleep again without doing something about it. So they eased their tail away from that of the still-sleeping Wanderer, put their underskirt on under their robe, and sneaked outside, heading uphill into the patch of woods that came more or less up to the back of UrGoh’s quarters.

Somehow just being near the village and those sentinel stones made it feel like they were being watched—and not approvingly—but they cursed under their breath and kept on regardless.

“That’s quite enough out of you,” they muttered to Thra, “unless you’re liberating us from the crude flesh _tonight_.”

There wasn’t much in the immediate vicinity, but there were some Noggies along with their larvae in the bole of a tree, and a thing that looked a bit like a fuzzy locksnake but had either two heads or no head, and a few wet croaking striped things in the tall grasses by a large puddle, and some kind of fungus that was _almost_ good enough at looking like rotten log bark to escape the Skeksis’ searching nose.

Much better.

As for UrGoh and the small hours of their night, the memory of GraGoh and Yuripi was sorrowful, but not surprising—as SkekGra had told the Mystics, sometimes they did come back like that now, all of a piece. And the Wanderer would have naturally expected an even stronger effect within the sphere of the UrRu and their spirals and pillars and dolmens.

What they wouldn’t have expected was what the dream segued into from there: sitting at a banquet table with cackling primping Skeksis all around them, and they knew they were in their own body immediately because SkekGra was sitting there too, laughing and tossing things in their mouth—yet the Podling servants kept setting huge platefuls of crawling and squirming and slithering things in front of UrGoh, urging them in those quintessentially grandparent-like Podling tones to “eat, eat you skinny thing, how do you expect to grow strong?”

…Just horrible.


	6. Questions (Unanswered)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which UrGoh and SkekGra are finally getting the promised chance to talk to the Mystics about their vision and the need to become whole again...but nobody promised anything about anyone talking _back_.

_Forum I — The Darkening Without — First Brother’s Zenith_

_“…While one are two, all are undone,  
Where truth is silent, lies have won,  
And doom laid down by triple sun  
Must be made permanent._

_But two made one this world can mend,  
A timely sign conspire to send;  
What age reveals, youth will defend,  
The truth their armament._

_Then shard and shard a shard may find,  
Unseen to only half a mind,  
But to the twin soul realigned,  
As bright as firmament._

_And should dark wed to light once more  
Long-stolen life to Thra restore—  
Though prophesied, you may be sure  
It was no accident.”_

SkekGra gave a deep elegant bow, then belatedly wondered whether they shouldn’t have. After all, this was the solemn recitation of a world-shaking prophecy for the saintly Mystics—not a picaresque tale of adventure for a drunken Skeksis court. Might have been a bit much. Such habits were hard to break.

“Then it told…each of us…to meet ourselves…at the Great Crossroads,” UrGoh concluded for them both. “So we did. And that…is when we began…to travel together.”

No one said anything for several long moments. The only sound was the scratch of the Scribe’s diligent pen on a roll of sturdy bark paper. The Seeker glanced around. Was it their imagination, or did everyone look tired this morning? Granted, they were UrRu, not exactly exuberant under the best of circumstances, but still.

“Extraordinary,” said UrSol at last.

“The message…seems clear…does it not?” This, as SkekGra immediately recognized, was their twin shard doing their utmost to radiate conviction, despite the very faint tremolo in their voice. To SkekGra, that only made the Wanderer’s plea seem more sincere and urgent, but who knew what the Mystics would think.

“Like it or not…our sundering has tied…the whole world’s fate…into our own. If we _don’t_ become whole again…the Skeksis will reign on for ages more…and Thra will wither with them. They will ravage…until literally nothing…is left. And it…will have been…our doing.”

“Yeah. I can attest, they’re not going to just stop on their own,” agreed the Seeker. “So think about that. You keep saying this was a punishment, something the Crystal did to us on purpose for our arrogance. But if that’s so, how do you think Thra can possibly have meant all this to end? Surely it doesn’t _seek_ its own destruction. Surely it wouldn’t deliberately create something like—us, if it didn’t think we’d set things right before it’s too late. I mean, you’re not…theorizing a suicidal planet? I’d hope?”

Once again, no one was eager to answer—not even the Master, who sat very slightly apart from the rest on the stone benches that were still assembled in a triangle in the commons. The Skeksis decided to focus their red-paint-encircled gaze on UrSol (since they’d spoken _one_ word already, and they were the leader UrGoh had pinned as being the least prejudiced) and wait for them to get uncomfortable enough to respond.

It worked. UrSol thoughtfully scratched the side of their snout, then gave a careful shrug. “It’s—a valid question. On the other hand…by the same reasoning, why would it deliberately put itself in such danger at all? Put its fate in our hands, which it sadly must have…already known to be untrustworthy?”

“Well, that’s part of why _I’m_ no longer convinced this whole thing was actually deliberate,” SkekGra returned with a wry look. “Our whole selves clearly didn’t quite know what they were doing with the Crystal experiment—perhaps we shouldn’t be presuming Thra foresaw all the outcome either.”

“But you do believe Thra _now_ knows what will come to pass, unless we do as you wish us to.”

“Yes, but _now_ some things about it have become pretty stinking obvious, haven’t they?”

“Some things?” The Chanter’s brow wrinkled.

“The…Darkening,” UrGoh said somberly. “That is what the UrSkek—GraGoh, or whichever of us it was—called it. The corruption that…flows from the wound…in the Crystal. A festering wound that we…have felt in our bones since…the day of the sundering. Yet we—the sages!—never speak of it…even among ourselves. Never study it. As though it’ll go away…if we ignore it. That growing imbalance… _infects_ this world.”

The Seeker thought of the shared dream from the previous night, which they and the Wanderer had discussed in fervent whispers immediately on waking: SoSu, and their concerns about ecology and contagion. UrGoh’s word choice here was deliberate.

“And the infection…has spread,” the Wanderer went on. “So slowly…that only very long-lived beings…like the trees…and _ourselves_ …have noticed. The other races…have no idea…of their peril. But that ignorance…won’t save them from its effects…will it.”

“Oh, that’s a point too,” SkekGra exclaimed. “I mean, if this _is_ for Thra and Thra-kind to take care of, why haven’t you Mystics told them about it? The spread’s not always going to stay this slow.”

It was the Master’s reaction the Seeker was eager to catch—they thought they detected a tiny flinch—but it was the Alchemist who stepped in. “That’s a different question. We should put it aside until this one is dealt with. Let’s not be sloppy.”

“No, it isn’t,” returned the Skeksis irritably, but they immediately caught themselves and tried to soften their grating voice again. (Funny, though, that for once there was no reproving glance from the Wanderer.) “Or…it partly is. But it does matter whether your argument on this question gels, or ah, makes sense together with…”

“Is consistent with,” put in UrGoh.

“Right, that. Is consistent with your—with what you do on related matters. And my other half’s right, it’s _not_ consistent, is it? You say this is the other races’ job to fix, but how are they supposed to do a job they don’t even know needs doing? Honestly, there’s probably a lot of things in that category now that I think of it. The way the Skeksis drain the Crystal is probably accelerating the Darkening, for instance. And you’ve got to have suspected that was going on! —Or at least _UrGoh_ knew it wasn’t an accident, how much better you all suddenly feel after the Lesser Conjunctions.” The Seeker gestured at the Wanderer, who gave one of their charmingly vigorous nods in support.

 _That_ finally produced some murmurs and noises of dismay. SkekGra cautioned themselves once again that they were the odd one out here and shouldn’t talk too much. But they were nevertheless glad they’d gone ahead and said this. It was the first time they’d seen concern expressed in UrRu bodies, not just UrRu words. That gave the Skeksis more personal satisfaction than it probably should, but more importantly, it put some thorns on the question that were hard to ignore.

A few of the Mystics did send the Wanderer stung looks, as though they felt they’d been tattled on (which the Seeker supposed they had). UrSu, however, studiously gave no sign for good or ill. The Seeker had seen that same grave, blank look on SkekSo’s face many a time, where all at once they’d appear seized by some vision off in the middle distance that held far more valuable insight than anything happening in front of them. Usually it meant they were actually giving a keen ear to the discussion—or the hissing match minimally dignified by verbal content—but wouldn’t want to _look_ like they’d been listening when they made their ruling later on. They preferred the Skeksis to think all truths came to the Emperor directly from…Thra knew what; but definitely some channel to higher reality, some realm untouched by ordinary intellects.

SkekGra wondered if the Master ever worked that one on the Mystics. Probably not _deliberately_. They didn’t seem nearly as consciously theatrical as their other half. Well, to start with, they weren’t wearing jet-encrusted robes and a many-spoked standing collar three times the size of their head.

But what if that was the difference, right there? Now there was an intriguing thought. That both halves might have the same rare gift for molding others’ perceptions, for manipulation even, and both might even use it for purposes of control (after all, what did a dozen-odd Mystics who never _did_ anything need a “Master” for?)—but one did so deliberately and with the aim of controlling a whole lot more than a gaggle of Skeksis, while the other did it instinctively and unintentionally. Or with only the best intentions.

A lot of the Mystics were indeed looking to the Master right now, but UrSu simply nodded in the Ritual-Guardian’s direction. UrZah gave a compliant hum and turned to address UrGoh.

“I don’t think the disagreement is about the problem, my kin, so much as the solution,” they began. “We don’t dispute the reality of this…Darkening, although we didn’t have a name of our own for it.”

“Well, but if—” SkekGra hesitated, glancing at their light half.

“Go ahead. You’ll…say it faster,” the Wanderer encouraged them, with an affectionate quirk of the lip. “And when it’s time…to challenge preconceptions…get a Skeksis.”

“I knew you were keeping me around for something, _naturally_ it’s to do your dirty work,” the Seeker snorted, hoping the sarcasm covered their momentary fluster at hearing this. They took in all the assembled UrRu with a glance. “Well, fine. If we agree on the problem, then let’s talk about solutions. List our strategic options, so to speak. Number one is what we’ve _been_ doing, which is nothing. How’s that coming along?”

A moment later they were forced to add, “Don’t crowd. There’s plenty of room to jump in.”

“I…don’t think we can be certain,” UrZah answered reluctantly. “We know there is an infection, as UrGoh put it earlier, but not its speed or extent.”

“So you’re saying there _is_ disagreement about the problem, not just the solution.”

“No…” UrZah tipped their head this way and that. Clearly they weren’t at _all_ used to countering ripostes (a skill no Skeksis could last one dinner at court without). Instead they gave UrGoh a befuddled, _please call off your Fizzgig_ sort of look. The Wanderer’s response was to take out their pipe-leaf pouch for a refill. Dear Thra, one could almost imagine they were enjoying this.

“No, not about the problem’s nature,” the Ritual-Master finally conceded. “But how things fare, how advanced the deterioration is, would necessarily affect any discussion of…solutions. And we simply don’t know that.”

“Don’t you think you ought to try to know?”

“Possibly…if it changed something that’s within our power to affect. We can’t be certain about that, either.”

The Skeksis stared at UrZah. “That—makes no sense,” they complained, though they tried to keep a friendly tone. “Of _course_ you can’t be certain, because you haven’t tried to find out yet. _First_ you’d have to find out, _then_ you could ask what it changes. Or what did I miss?”

“Please don’t misunderstand,” said the Alchemist. “No one’s saying that this knowledge is not to be desired. Indeed, we value knowledge highly for its own sake…as much as Skeksis do, if not more…”

“I’m sure it’s more.”

“…but as you know, your own kind have made that pursuit difficult for us over the many trine. Sowing distrust against us, telling the Gelfling and Podlings we’re wicked and dangerous.” UrTih shook their head regretfully. “I myself used to travel in search of learning, quite a bit more than I do now. I—miss it.”

“Oh, well! I could help with that part,” the Seeker answered, perking up a bit. “If we can persuade the other Skeksis, that is. Or even before then—I’m good at finding out things, on the sly if necessary. Not terrible at protecting Mystics, either. Maybe we could collaborate on that. We should at least make the effort.”

The Alchemist opened their mouth, but then shut it again. No one else spoke.

“I mean…there’s some time left to think about it,” SkekGra finished awkwardly. “Not forever, but a little while.”

“A little while,” agreed UrGoh, “though with…each trine that passes…before we begin, the less time we have…to finish. And we are not known…for our swiftness.”

“Exactly. But, ah, back to options.” The Seeker fervently wished this were the sort of thing they could explain with their maps and miniatures, because their hands itched to be occupied. Or (once again!) if they’d just thought to bring a blasted staff. Everyone _else_ had one. As it was, they became conscious every so often of their talons stretching and crooking, for no real reason but to work off energy, which was probably not the way to put Mystic nerves at ease.

“There’s doing nothing, which is—apparently still on the table, though the vision was quite adamant about what happens if we take that course. Then there’s not directly doing anything ourselves, but warning someone of the Thra-kind about it…presumably the Gelfling, unless anyone’s heard some whisper of a reemergence of Mother Aughra. I’m still waiting to hear why you’ve never even tried to do that. I know you don’t want to fight us, for the same reason we don’t want to fight you. And I—know it’s hard to even _think_ about actually talking to us. I didn’t like it one bit either, at first. It was just this vision driving me crazy and making me do it…”

The Wanderer made one of their little _whuff_ noises.

“Not _saying_ I had far to go,” muttered the Seeker. “But never mind that. What I mean is, you Mystics could still have gotten the word out…anytime you wanted. There were ways to accomplish the thing that wouldn’t have revealed you or your village. Yet you’ve chosen not to.”

UrSol was a bit quicker off the post than the Ritual-Master. “And do you now judge us for that, Skeksis Lord of the Crystal…?” they asked rather curtly.

The other Mystics frowned and stirred at the Chanter’s words, perhaps because they were about as close to defensive or confrontational as UrRu ever got. But no one remonstrated.

The Seeker raised their hands in concession. “Thra, no. I’m not in a position to judge anyone for anything. But surely we all know why _my_ kind hasn’t stopped it? We’re the acknowledged villains of the piece. You’re not. That’s why I don’t understand. You must have a reason for not saying anything to anyone in all these trine. So what is it? Do you just prefer us at the Castle to keep going on with—what we’re doing—because you benefit as well?”

 _Second_ time bringing this point up. Perhaps it was time to start keeping count and see how many it took before anyone would touch it. SkekGra did hate to do this to UrGoh; after all, their own private back-and-forth on this point had been so harrowing for the Mystic. Once or twice the Seeker had legitimately worried that the shame of it might kill them (or, to be more precise, that they might decide to end it for both halves). It didn’t seem to be disturbing the Wanderer anymore, however. Their thick-maned head was lifted almost proudly, to a sober but resolute angle.

Perhaps that was the reward for really having it out with oneself. For their part, the Seeker could still only let the acceptance of their own, far greater guilt in by stages. It was such a miserable, seemingly interminable process. Yet on the other hand—denying, excusing, raging and walling it all out of awareness had been consuming so much more of their energy than they’d realized, until they finally let themselves set the burden down.

Now they knew how much easier it was sometimes to go ahead and _be wrong_. More than just easier, in fact: it opened up whole new paths, new vistas that hadn’t been visible before, which was always good news for an explorer. One would certainly think that if a Skeksis could learn that, the ‘wise ones’ could as well.

The Wanderer hummed. “It’s not…an unfair question, UrSol…?”

“I suppose it—does makes sense, that the Skeksis would assume that to be our reasoning,” the Chanter allowed. Then they fell quiet, as though that had actually been an answer.

“Well, if it’s not that, then what in Thra _is_ it?” tried the Seeker again. _Three._

Silence once more, though the looks being exchanged were increasingly unsettled.

“I didn’t have…a good answer…for my dark half, either,” the Wanderer confessed, subdued. “And I still don’t. But…I think we ought to, my kin. It is becoming…painful…to keep this secret…from all the innocents I see, on the roads…and in the villages of Thra. Painful to keep wondering…how my oldest friends feel about it…yet never daring to ask.”

SkekGra laid a discreet hand on UrGoh’s shoulder. Their skeletal touch hadn’t always been a source of reassurance for the Wanderer, or anyone else for that matter. But now that they possessed the power, it was hard to see their light half troubled and not want to use it. If the Mystics wanted to stare, fine, they could have an eyeful.

“We have kept so many painful secrets for so long,” mused UrIm. They looked as though they rather wanted to put an arm or three around the Wanderer themselves—then again, UrGoh had introduced them as an old personal friend. (The Seeker jotted down a favorable note in their mental record of the Healer.) “I suppose we might have gotten too used to it. Stopped distinguishing between the secrets that only hurt for us, and the ones that could hurt the rest of the world as well. This Darkening, as your UrSkek called it. It is true, we knew. We’ve felt that wound in our hearts from the very beginning. I don’t know if—the Skeksis have.”

The Mystics turned as one to SkekGra, who got the same strange little flutter of nerves they always had when asked to speak to Skeksis culture as a whole, as opposed to just themselves.

“I think so,” said the Seeker. “Though we certainly never discuss it among ourselves either. It’d be idiotic. You could mention something like that to another, even one of your allies that called you friend, and the next time they were angry they’d throw it back in your face. In private, if you’re _lucky_.”

Now why had they gone into that much detail? They’d once sworn they’d never let even UrGoh look at them like that, and now here was a blasted villageful of the things doing it. But UrIm thankfully moved the subject back.

“Back then, we didn’t know what to do…about anything.” The Healer’s eyes went a bit unfocused. They were visibly making a strenuous effort to recall. “We didn’t even know how to live, how to feed and clothe ourselves, how to make our new bodies work the old magic. I suppose the deeper trouble fell to the wayside, in the face of those more insistent concerns—and by the time we finally got our bearings, we’d just…as I said before…gotten too used to it. My friend,” they added, looking again at the Seeker, “you’ve probably noticed that the greater part of our original selves’ drive and…initiative went to your kind, not ours.”

 _My friend?_ thought SkekGra. “Well. Yes. I have. Cruel irony, eh? Our task here would be a lot easier if it’d gone the other way round.”

“Yes.” The Healer smiled wistfully. “I’ve often wished it had done so. I don’t know my other half as you surely must, but…”

“Oh, it depends. Which one is you? I mean—that’d be—who?”

“SkekUng.”

_“Really?”_

“You’re surprised,” UrIm observed calmly.

SkekGra rotated their head to a rather deep slant to scrutinize the Healer—as though changing the view would better reveal some small hint of resemblance. “I _am_ surprised. You’re…uh. Well. I don’t suppose anyone’d think UrGoh and I were once the same person either. But yes, SkekUng, of course. The Enforcer. They’ve fought beside me many times. Why?”

“Well. As you say, look at me.” The UrRu gestured with many arms, taking in the intricate but worn coat-robe, the flowing shirt, the long-sloping nose and narrow eyes that gave them a mild, scholarly air, the pouches hung from straps, and the strings of crystal that cascaded against each other as the Healer moved to make a rain-like sound. “Don’t you think the Enforcer would sooner strike us both down than acknowledge a connection?”

“I don’t see anything wrong with you, you’re just a Mystic,” the Seeker replied unthinkingly. Then the bemused murmurs from the onlookers reminded them that wasn’t the ordinary Skeksis opinion, and certainly hadn’t always been _their_ opinion. “Yes, though, yes, they’d probably feel that way at first. It did take time for us two, time off alone with—our self. But you can see, we managed not to strangle each other.”

“And so long as that holds…” put in UrGoh, “everything else…can be accomplished. Wherever there is life…there is the possibility of change.”

“Yeah. And SkekUng’s not…they’re ill-tempered all right, they’ll knock anyone down who looks at them funny, but they’re not totally out of control. They’re not some mad _beast_. If they were, I could never have used them as a commander,” SkekGra pointed out. “They’re—actually very clever. And they never fail to see to the troops. I mean in terms of supply chain and so on. I know their Gelfling will always have full bellies, sharp swords, regular messages from home. They’ll be drilled within an inch of their little lives too, because the harder they’re drilled, the more will live to be veterans and officers.”

UrIm had the most peculiar look on their face. Or rather, _looks_ —their eyes and lips seemed to flash rapidly back and forth between the shapes of alarm and wonder.

“I’d like to be next,” the Chanter commented. “If the Chamberlain has any good points at all, I would be very interested to hear about them.”

“That’s enough.” The Master shifted on their bench, creakily, as though they hadn’t moved for hours. Which they might not have; this conversational speed made it easy to lose track of time.

UrGoh started, their eyes widening. “But we still…Master, we haven’t…answered the question,” they protested. “UrIm may be right…about why we haven’t told the Gelfling _yet_ …”

“But we’re not just here to figure out the past, we’re here to decide the future as well!” finished SkekGra, a little agitated on their twin shard’s behalf.

“The future…can take time for tea,” replied UrSu. They pushed off with their cane and rose unsteadily to their feet. “We will reconvene at the next zenith.”

* * *

“Interesting timing on the adjournment there,” SkekGra remarked to their light half. The two of them had taken their tea to UrGoh’s quarters so they could discreetly make mincemeat of the no-talking-at-meals rule. And UrAmaj had aided and abetted this time, by cutting up some more of the fruit from breakfast and passing it to the Seeker in a bowl as they ambled by (“Here—I saw you eyeing it earlier, even as I carted it away.”). Sliced into segments of the perfect size to pop into a Skeksis beak, too, with no mess at all.

UrGoh smiled as they watched the Seeker eat, which may have been a first for them both. “Now _that_ …is more the Cook…that I remember,” they said fondly.

“I think it’s a bit of a pity meal, but at this point I’ll take anything. Is getting a clear answer out of UrRu always this difficult? I really had no idea how comparatively straightforward you are, for one of your kind.”

The Wanderer was sitting at their writing-desk leafing through some of their old journals and maps, pulling out a few that needed re-binding or repair. “We are called _Mystics_ …for a reason, Seeker.”

“I kept waiting for you to pull me back,” SkekGra went on. “But you never did, or if you did I missed it. Why? Here I am doing my level best to be…not a Skeksis, and you’re not helping at all.”

“Perhaps I didn’t…bring you here…to be not-a-Skeksis.”

“Yeah, I’m noticing. You fairly set me on your poor Ritual-Master.”

“Ritual-Guardian,” UrGoh corrected. “Though…they are also the Ritual-Master…so, never mind. You…do understand, don’t you?”

“Understand what?” The Skeksis perched on the edge of the sleep-frame and proceeded to take great pleasure and relief in spearing piece after piece of pommerfruit on their talon. All blessings to UrAmaj. All was forgiven.

“You are not…my performing Fizzgig.”

SkekGra looked up at that, feathery brows twisting in the beginnings of displeasure. “Er. _What?_ I’d think not. Don’t presume on my Grotting acquaintance just because you’re me, Mystic.”

“I’m serious,” UrGoh insisted, and although a hint of smile still played about their lips, they were the very picture of sincerity. “You are not here…for me to prove…my _control_ over you…to the others.”

“I know that!”

“Do you…?”

“Of course!” the Seeker retorted, but then they blinked and made a little crackling noise of perplexity. _Did_ they indeed know that? “Well. I am giving up warfare for you, that’s not—nothing.”

“Not just for me. And not because I’m…your master…or your minder. I am neither. And you are not…an _evil_ …to be restrained…and imprisoned…by my will. Do you understand?”

SkekGra quickly rescued the bit of fruit that was trying to seize its chance to fall off their claw unobserved. “I—well. You’ve said neither of us should be over the other, and I thought I agreed. We haven’t really worked through…the evil question. But _they’re_ all extremely worried about whether you can control me, you know. I’ve been trying all this time to put their worries to rest.”

“Yes, I know. They really _don’t_ understand.” The Wanderer sighed and leaned sidewise, resting an elbow on the armpad of their chair. “I didn’t…pull you back…because they needed to be pushed. That was the part of GraGoh…that needed to lead in this matter. You see…how their passivity and uncertainty…holds them back from doing…what they know in their hearts should be done. That…is why we _need_ you. And all the other Skeksis too. Or as many of them…as we can get.”

“You’re angry at them, aren’t you?” SkekGra exclaimed, and then immediately lowered their voice. “The other Mystics. You are, so you’re letting me— _do_ your anger! Our anger. I admit I’m a bit annoyed myself.”

UrGoh nodded. “If Thra is kind, perhaps…I’ll learn better how to ‘do’ my own…by watching you. But for now…you’re much more skilled at it,” they finished, with a warm glance at SkekGra. “I think you actually have…more control over it.”

“You really do use all that time you’re smoking and wallowing around like an old Nebrie to think.”

“Yes, I do.”

The Seeker chuckled. “And I suppose—yes. I see your point. If gentleness means you just sit back and let terrible things happen when they shouldn’t be allowed…that can be—”

“An evil.”

“Well, or just wrong.”

“Or an evil,” the Wanderer said heavily. “And it needs to stop. You were right, SkekGra…that day. It is _not_ virtue to stand back and…keep one’s own hands clean…at the expense of others. That is why we must act…and why you must help me… _make_ us act. —No, don’t—apologize. I said you were right.”

The Seeker had to stop eating to think this through properly, though they did lick the juice off their talons. “It’s a little disconcerting when you go all steely, my other side. But you’re right, as well…that does sound like a more worthy role than the performing-Fizzgig one.”

“I thought it might appeal,” UrGoh said, turning back to the desk; and the way they said it, it really _did_ sound like the Conqueror’s words in a different voice.


	7. Dialogue (and Dialogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which yr. humble was innocently writing what WAS to be a chapter focused on the tense discussions between the Mystics and SkekGra and UrGoh, and then! suddenly! -- SkekSil's light half literally bursts out of the bushes to offer us the feels.
> 
> [CW: general discussion of suicide]

_Forum II — The Fracture Within — Second Brother’s Zenith_

“Just for completeness, it’d be remiss not to mention—there _is_ always that option,” the Seeker was saying, not long after the forum reconvened. It'd gotten cloudy and rather chilly for the time of day, although Thra be thanked, the Wanderer had mercifully turned up a spare coverlet from somewhere during the tea break. The Seeker had it thrown round their shoulders and belted in front now, the same way they’d have worn a fur tippet on campaign up in the mountains.

“What option?” UrMa asked. _“Suicide?”_

“Yeah,” returned SkekGra. “You can kill us any time you want. Knowing you lot, you probably even have some ritual painless herbal _gentle_ way to do it. Don’t you?”

There were various hums in various registers from the UrRu at this: mostly very uneasy ones, though a few sounded more like stoic acknowledgment. The Seeker turned an insistent gaze on UrIm.

The Healer looked in turn at the Herbalist, who’d settled, both pairs of hands loosely clasped, in between them and the Cook. Then they cleared their throat and said simply, “We’ve never discussed it.”

“Never?” SkekGra managed not to make it sarcastic, but didn’t bother trying to pretend surprise either. At this point that’d be fatuous.

“We don’t make detailed study of poisons,” the Herbalist explained. “We’ve no call to. Perhaps the Skeksis do. But our studies are for physical and mental healing, for nutrition, for divination…and, of course, for a better overall understanding of Thra’s balance.”

“Thra’s _im_ balance…” UrGoh rumbled mildly.

“But aren’t those sometimes the same drugs?” SkekGra pointed out. “Come, come, I know UrGoh and I aren’t the scientific experts here, but even I know from the battlefield that if you get too much anesthetic you’ll die.”

The hanging decorations on UrSu’s staff clacked as the Master transferred it to their other hand and shifted their weight. “And are you seriously proposing this course of action, Seeker?”

The Seeker chuffed. “Depends on what you mean by _seriously_. It’s not what we prefer, it’s _definitely_ not what we recommend. On the other hand, it probably would be…better to do that, than to just let things go on like this indefinitely.”

General consternation met this—quiet, but consternation nonetheless. “Indeed?” said UrSu. “Go on.”

“Better for Thra and the Thra-kind, I meant,” SkekGra amended with a reflexive dip of the head towards the Master—who they now really did subconsciously consider an extension of SkekSo. (Why in Grot was UrSu’s voice always so hoarse, though? They didn’t talk nearly as much as their counterpart did.) “It wouldn’t heal the Crystal on its own…but it would stop what the Skeksis are doing, which should at least slow down the infection. And that would leave the Castle open for the other peoples to occupy. _Presumably_ they’d do so, and then presumably they’d see—how bad the Darkening is getting. They’re certainly going to notice the Crystal looks wrong, they’re certainly going to notice the _chains_ on it, and the cathode-anode assembly.”

 _“Chains?”_ UrTih cut in, with very un-Mystic-like alarm.

“Yes, chains,” the Seeker affirmed coldly. “To pull it down into the lab for experiments. Your other half has made a number of innovations on the equipment since you left.”

The Alchemist looked like they’d seen a ghost at these words. They put a hand on the bench to steady themselves. UrSol curled an arm around their shoulders.

Pursue the new quarry or return to the point? SkekGra decided on the latter. “As for whether it’d be better for us personally, that’s harder to say. The fate of the Skeksis if they go on reigning the way they—we have? The scenes the UrSkek in the vision showed me? Were…horrifying, as you heard. But we don’t know—exactly how far in the future that’d be taking place. We don’t know if it’s before any of the upcoming Lesser Conjunctions, or the Great Conjunction, or after it. I’d rather not wait to find out, myself. And the fate of the UrRu, as you also heard…” They glanced at their light half.

“It is… _marginally_ better…than rotting to pieces…murdering each other…and slow starvation in a barren waste,” UrGoh finished dryly. “But I’d call that…cold comfort. To fade into complete…dotage…with no memory even of our half-selves…and prey to whatever the Skeksis may do…to each other, in their final spasms. Then, yes, starvation…finishing off the survivors. And far worse…the rest of Thra will have…predeceased us. As SkekGra said…we both would rather die, than live to see…such an end for all. Surely you, my kin…would as well.”

The Seeker considered their twin shard’s point well made, but they did have to wonder for a moment how in Thra these conversations were going to work once they got to talking with the Skeksis side. Those circling Z’nids would never let UrGoh finish a phrase at that speed, never mind a sentence. Gah, one impossible task at a time.

“It is not our place, but Thra’s, to decide when our part in the Song shall end,” the Ritual-Guardian pronounced.

The Seeker groaned. “Our place, you all keep going on about what our _place_ is. And is there any particular reason why that matters? Are you afraid Thra’s going to cast your souls into the inner fires for all eternity or something, if you don’t die in the exact right way exactly on cue?”

“No, that is not the point,” UrZah answered in a _minutely_ louder voice. “The point is that Thra knows what is best for Thra. It shall end our lives, or not, at the proper hour. We submit to its judgment because the alternative is to substitute our own, and that is arrogance. The arrogance that—”

“That cracked the Crystal, we know—” At the collective dour looks they got ( _including_ from the Wanderer this time), SkekGra stopped short. “Oh, sorry. I interrupted. Please finish. I’m sorry.”

UrZah hesitated, then visibly calmed themselves with an exhalation. “That cracked the Crystal, as you said. Or to be precise, that created the _Skeksis_ , who cracked the Crystal. Lest we forget.”

SkekGra bit back _Trust me, I’m not about to forget!_ for the sake of the mission.

“UrZah speaks for me on this matter,” said UrMa. “For most of us, I suspect.” There were nods of support all round at this, though not all were equally enthusiastic.

The Seeker scratched thoughtfully under the bone-ridge that ran along their upper jaw, and then did something they would _never_ have done in an argument with a Skeksis, or really with anyone half a trine ago: concede the point.

“Well, all right, that’s a fair enough argument against suicide. I did mention that wasn’t my first choice either? But all that fate folderol can’t be a blanket justification against doing _anything_ about the problem. All the other creatures of Thra run around doing whatever they can to keep themselves and their kith alive, and that’s part of what creates fate, isn’t it? I’m not sure I even understand why Thra would want us to be the one exception. You say we’re not of Thra. And the UrSkeks weren’t, I know. But what made the Skeksis and UrRu? Where did these bodies we’re wearing come from, if _not_ Thra and its Crystal?”

“That…is a good question,” murmured UrAmaj. “Or, I think it is. —I’ll have to think about it,” they quickly added, when all the others’ muzzles swiveled towards them. “This is all pretty…complicated, isn’t it.”

“Yes, my friend…it is,” UrGoh agreed warmly. “We must all…think it through. But what is certain…is that half of us… _already_ ranges across Thra…arrogantly shaping and interfering with...this world’s life…in exactly the way we don’t want to. But we don’t stop them. No, better to say…we don’t stop _us_. And that...adds up to: we really _are_ interfering.”

“And how would you have us stop them, my kin?” the Master queried. “We’ve spent much time discussing what you’ve said are _not_ your preferred solutions. I would like to hear the one you do prefer.”

* * *

And here it was at last. Indeed, SkekGra was astounded it had taken this long, but eventually someone was bound to notice that the questioned were becoming questioners, and seek to turn the tables back around. The Master had seemed uneager to take the proceedings overtly in hand so far, leaving most of that work to UrZah; but they must now feel things had gone far enough and stakes risen high enough to make it necessary. The prospect piqued SkekGra’s competitive instincts, their love of being challenged, forced to perform under stress. For them, the momentary racing of heartbeat and the heightening of animal alertness were the same pleasant tension they’d always been.

But it seemed to land a bit differently on their Mystic half, who was after all having to face up to their people’s leader—a being they seemed to have such strong feelings about. They swallowed and looked up at their dark half, who crinkled their eyes back at them, trying to somehow visually transmit confidence. (Now would have been a good time to have lips to smile with, in addition. Oh well.) _Remember that we rehearsed all this between ourselves. …Extensively. At your insistence._

“We should…seek unity…as soon as that can…plausibly be achieved,” UrGoh finally answered. “And we must not…wait until the true unity is possible…to at least begin.”

“Well, we’ve gathered that much,” replied UrSol with an affable toss of their mane. “The question, again, is _how_.”

“Yes.” The Wanderer readily, energetically nodded. “Yes…well. One part of it…is research…obviously. Some of which…can be done here. But some of it…may well require…access to the Crystal.”

“And there we already are, at one deep stream to ford.”

“Yes. There are…multiple reasons…why this needs…the cooperation of at least… _some_ Skeksis. Just SkekGra…will not be enough.”

“Yeah.” The Seeker shrugged. “Me, I’ll do anything, and I pretty well have the run of the place, I’m their—they still think I’m their Conqueror. So they respect me, at least for now. But I certainly can’t get anyone in to study the Crystal without at least bringing over the Scientist and—probably one or two of the others. And it’s likely we’ll need most or all of them in the end. It won’t happen overnight, which is why we have to start now.”

“Give me the sequence of events,” prompted the Master, an odd flinty light in their eyes.

SkekGra and UrGoh exchanged glances again.

“Well, we can’t give _the_ sequence of events,” the Seeker demurred. “You know what they say about battle plans. And we were hoping that—if we could convince you—you might have improvements to offer. But we can give _a_ possible sequence, I guess. We’d have to make overtures to some or all of my kind. I personally…wouldn’t mind going a bit carefully with it at first. We could start with one of the ones who regularly leave the Castle anyway.”

“Start what?”

“Start this.” The Seeker gestured between themselves and the Wanderer. “What UrGoh and I have done. Meet. Talk. Get to know our true selves again.” They carefully ran their gaze over all the assembled so as _not_ to single out UrSu. Or UrSol. Or UrZah. “I also don’t object to starting with the somewhat easier ones.”

From the way the UrRu were regarding each other, it was plain they were now asking themselves, maybe for the first time, who might qualify as ‘easier.’ “Let us leave those specifics aside for now, and suppose you succeed in persuading a couple, or a few,” said UrSu. “And then?”

“And then, well, there are two possible approaches, depending on who we’ve got and how well we did. If it seems possible, and if we’d rather, we could take the…non-sneaky path. Get everyone we have a chance at individually, and then when we have enough support that—the Emperor will feel forced to accede…we apply for a parley.”

“Apply for a parley with the Emperor,” returned the Ritual-Guardian with a palpable lack of faith.

“It’s not…as though…they can just…kill us…for the presumption,” the Wanderer reminded them.

“But they could—could throw us in a dungeon, or something,” put in UrMa. “Where we’re of no use to anyone. And then Thra knows what. Would SkekSo really shrink at punishing some of us, even if it hurt some of their own? I’m sorry, Master,” they added with a guilty glance at UrSu.

“No need, my kin,” UrSu said somberly, their eyes downcast. “That too is a valid question. And the ex-Conqueror must know the answer to it, better than I do.”

 _‘The ex-Conqueror has more insight into myself than me does’?_ thought SkekGra. _And you, a Mystic—!_

Yet that was now the confirmed tactic here. However unbelievably against type it might be, UrSu clearly had no intention of allowing any good-faith exploration of a problem that affected all of Thra. They were just going to keep throwing the doubts and questions back into UrGoh’s and SkekGra’s laps—even if the question was about their own soul!—until one or both shards made some fatal error. And if that wasn’t working, then it’d be time for another tea break, or perhaps even another social disaster. It was hard not to feel a little contempt: SkekGra had always stood in awe of SkekSo’s ruthless cunning, but not their disdain for directly risking their own skinny neck. (The Conqueror hadn’t remotely minded lying or cheating to achieve their goals either, but they actively _preferred_ to handle the tricky dangerous parts whenever they could. Above all, they loved openly leading the charge at the crucial moment, so to speak. Taking credit after the victory was more SkekSo’s style, and they usually got away with it.)

They wondered again how much of it was conscious or deliberate on the Master’s part, but in truth it didn’t matter that much. They reminded themselves that yes, in the end, they and UrGoh _would_ need to drag even the Emperor back from the abyss, and then see them made whole. Somehow. And UrSu would by definition be crucial to that.

“The Emperor isn’t nearly as invulnerable as they like to appear,” SkekGra told them, straightening their spine. “You Mystics of all people shouldn’t fall for that act. They’ve had to back off things before, when enough of us were shocked enough to object.”

“They have?” piped up UrSol and UrGoh simultaneously, and in roughly equal surprise. The Seeker gave their other half a crooked-jaw look of amusement.

Then the Chanter added rather archly, “That is to say, the Skeksis have been shocked at something?”

“What?” exclaimed the Seeker, now surprised in their turn. “Honestly, what do you think we are? Just monsters?”

Before someone thought they actually wanted the answer to that, they hastened to continue: “Well, I—guess I would be to you, but that’s…not all of us. And Grot yes, even I’m capable of being shocked! For all my…” _Make yourself say it, coward._ “Crimes. UrGoh could never have won me, ah, won me over if I’d been _that_ far gone. —For Thra’s sake, SkekEkt’s not dangerous to anything that doesn’t have fur. Or feathers. Or especially pretty scales, I suppose. SkekOk will fillet and braise you properly with their tongue, especially behind your back, but they don’t…well. You see my point.”

UrUtt and UrAc both seemed abashed and unnerved to hear their own other halves being brought up, even as relatively mild examples. Their eyes sought the ground just as Master UrSu’s had.

As for SkekGra, they’d became aware that their own neck-ruff was a trifle puffed, and they had to be looking every bit as awkward as they now felt. They sent their twin shard an ocular appeal for rescue. The Wanderer put a steadying hand on theirs where it rested on the bench, and they could feel through the touch that in UrGoh’s opinion they’d earned one.

“The point,” said the Wanderer, picking up the thread, “is that no reign is unshakable. Not even SkekSo’s.” They looked quickly at the Master, and then just as quickly away. “We believe that we…can bring enough of the others to our side…that the Emperor has no choice but to…at least listen. Or allow us…to see the Crystal. We might even…demand it. If we insist; if we can…be brave.”

“If we threaten suicide, you mean,” UrMa frowned.

“No. But if…we are _willing_ to die, rather than…take no for an answer. That, too…will be easier…with Skeksis allies.”

“And what if you don’t get enough of our dark halves for that to work?” asked UrIm. “You said there was another approach.”

“Yes, the sneaky way,” the Seeker nodded. “Again, the research has to be done no matter what, as to how the true unity can be reached. We need to figure out the method and the timing, and for all we know there are other things to learn that could…radically change the plan. Make our path easier, or harder. So even if the, I don’t know what you’d call it, not _partial_ unity exactly—”

“I think of it…as harmonization,” said UrGoh. “We are not yet the same body…or the same mind…but our influence on each other has grown…to where we decide our path together. And we are…bound. In a certain regard for each other, and for the…sum of us, for our true self.”

SkekGra found these words pleasing, but couldn’t help noticing a few other faces dropping in dismay, notably UrSu’s and UrMa’s. They thought UrGoh’s move to SkekGra’s side was a move away from _their_ friendship.

And they were hurt by it.

And it was absolutely terrible, how SkekGra could now be hurt by that on UrGoh’s behalf, even when UrGoh themselves didn’t catch it. Not for the first time, the Seeker felt a stab of dread, of sinking uncertainty. What had they done to themselves? To the Wanderer, for that matter?

What if this _was_ all doomed to bring only pain to both of them, and for nothing? The Conqueror never had to bother with such mewling worries. Now the Conqueror was dead; had anything truly worthwhile replaced them?

“Harmonization,” repeated the Chanter. “Interesting. To some extent, on the technical side, it would indeed be a matter of aligning wavelengths.” At the Ritual-Master’s darting glance, they clarified, “To _some_ extent, I said, for any full reunification. There are, of course, many other obstacles.”

UrGoh hummed acknowledgment. “But again, either way…even if harmonization is…stymied for the nonce…we can work towards…learning what will be required eventually…for the true unity. ‘Sneakily,’ as the Seeker says. If we had the cooperation…of certain Gelfling guards, for example. Or even…Podling servants. We may succeed in…getting close enough…to take crucial readings.”

“Even that’d be a lot more than we have now,” SkekGra amplified. Inside they were battling to redirect their suddenly-rioting emotions back to the present challenge, but outwardly they gave no sign of it (or hoped they didn’t). “Is there any good reason _not_ to do it? Are you too busy?”

“Well, what about you?” asked UrAmaj. “Would you be going back to the Castle and…becoming the Conqueror again? You said you were done with all that. But if we were—sneaking, wouldn’t you…?”

“No, I wish I could. It’d be fun to turn coat and spy like that—”

 _“Fun?”_ UrAc practically squeaked.

“Oh yes,” the Seeker said loftily. “It’s always good fun. And it’d make a lot of our task easier. But I can’t just _play_ at that role, I’m afraid. Not for more than a few more unum, though that much I’d be willing to try if we had some plan for it. No, the others will be expecting more…results, before long. More conquests. More new tributaries. As it is, my army must be getting nervous. Eventually they’ll be required to send a report, and then they’ll have to admit they have—no idea where I am.”

“You’re saying they don’t know where you are?” The Scribe was positively scandalized now. “Didn’t you tell them anything?”

“Er, yes.” SkekGra tried and failed to repress a squirm. “Well, not the _truth_ obviously. I just said I’d been urgently summoned to the Castle. That would hold them for at least a few unum. My lieutenants aren’t going to be the ones to ask their lords where I’ve gone. They can get along fine without me for a good while”— _probably forever, really_ —“and they won’t want to seem…impertinent. But their lords will eventually think to ask them.”

“You mean you just lied.”

“Of course I lied.” The Seeker blinked in disbelief, then remembered where they were. “Well, what would you have said in my place? Oh, never mind—suffice it to say, they’re grizzled soldiers. If I’d told them I had a vision from Thra telling me to find one of the very creatures we’ve been warning them to stay away from for hundreds of trine, so I could rejoin my _soul_ with its soul because—it’s…actually _me_ , and _I’m_ really only half of this alien— _thing_ they’ve never heard of? They’d have drugged and hauled me back to the Castle so SkekTek could cure me of my insanity before I hurt myself, or someone else I’m, er, not supposed to. Any _one_ part of that would have sealed the bargain, as far as they were concerned!”

The Wanderer began huffing quietly, their usual laughing-noise, and a moment later the Alchemist was as well, and then the Chanter.

“Hm,” said the Scribe, and it was absolutely a tart, querulous, Scroll-Keeper kind of _hm_. “When you put it that way, it does sound rather deranged.”

A few more discreet, hesitant huffs joined the trio. Did Mystics laugh together like this often, or was SkekGra witnessing something on the order of a Lesser Conjunction here?

In any case, they had to snicker as well. “Frankly, I wouldn’t believe in us if I _wasn’t_ one of us.”

* * *

“It is quite an…odd situation,” the Healer wryly allowed. “I’ve often wished we had some elder wisdom, some learned prescription for it. But if there is a precedent on any of the worlds we ever journeyed to, I can’t for the life of me recall it. Nothing that would help us know what to do, at any rate. We’ve always been alone with it.”

The Wanderer said gently, “We don’t…have to be, UrIm. I’m not…anymore.”

“Yes, I’m sitting right here you know,” the Seeker followed on in mock-umbrage.

“You said yourselves, SkekGra is not enough,” noted UrMa.

“SkekGra is the first. Not the only,” UrGoh assured them.

“Well, but _clearly_ SkekGra is different from the others. Somehow.”

“I don’t know that that’s so,” said SkekGra, their tone quickly turning more thoughtful. “Like I’ve said, it’s not that I just jumped up and threw away my swords. There was the vision urging me, and telling me I must urge others in turn, which I’m doing. But I didn’t have a change of heart and go looking for UrGoh. I found UrGoh and had a change of heart. And now, I’m just—not quite the same Skeksis with my other half, as I was alone. There’s no reason that couldn’t happen for others, if they’ll only try it.”

“Part of why the Skeksis…are so lost…” the Wanderer explained, “ _is_ that we're supposed…to be there with them…and we’re not.”

The Herbalist held up all their hands. “And whose fault is that? Who drove us out of the Castle with their violence?” They shot the Seeker an almost defiant look.

“It’s not…a matter…of fault.” SkekGra was very glad UrGoh was willing to take this point up; they weren’t at all sure they could have been so patient with it. “The Skeksis…were wrong…to drive us out. We…are wrong…not to have ever tried to go back. And _we_ , not they…control what we do now. We are old and powerful…not young and confused. We cannot blame…one thing they did long ago…for all our negligence after. None of it…changes the fact…that we are supposed to be with them. And they with us.”

“I’m trying to give all this benefit of doubt,” the Alchemist grimaced. “But my kin, it does keep sounding to me as though you do fault us, for not… _minding_ the Skeksis. Like wild beasts, or errant childlings that we somehow asked to be put in charge of, and then abandoned. Where is their responsibility?”

“They don’t…require… _‘minding.’_ ” Then again, maybe the Wanderer’s patience was fraying as well, though they barely showed it. “We don’t…have to ‘mind’ them, UrTih. We only have to…be ourselves…but be ourselves _with them_. That is our responsibility…and theirs is the same. When we all do that—things will change. As they have with…the Conqueror, now the Seeker.”

“Because the Skeksis will be so eager to take our example?” scoffed UrZah. SkekGra suppressed their own jeer of agreement. They knew all too well that really _wasn’t_ how this worked, but they had to admit it sounded hilariously naive.

“No. Because we _are_ them. Please…my kin…understand.” UrGoh once again gathered all their fellow UrRu with a glance. “This isn’t…like trying to push…an erring friend…or some captured criminal…to reform. This is us…regaining _our selves_. And with it, the ability to self-discipline. For how can one whose self is scattered across a continent…hope to discipline it?”

“But we manage to behave without their help,” argued UrTih. “You’re saying they’re just incapable of doing the same, so others must do it for them? Forgive me, my kin, but that _is_ zookeeping.”

“You can’t have that both ways though,” SkekGra exclaimed, which startled the rest a little (this had rapidly started feeling like a purely intramural Mystic debate). “I am still sitting right here, by the by. Behaving indeed— _is_ this about what actually happens to Thra, or is it just about your feeling like _you’re_ behaving, you’re pure, you never have to worry about making a mistake? If it’s the latter then I’m wasting our time here because, yes: if you become one with us again, you’re not going to be pure anymore. You weren’t coming in, you certainly won’t be coming out. If that’s it just tell me, but then don’t pretend you really care about Thra in and of itself. Or if you _do_ care about Thra in and of itself, then for Thra’s sweet sake, stop pestering UrGoh about whether they’re faulting you or not, because what does that matter? We’re all facing the same doom regardless, aren’t we? The Podlings have _no_ fault in any of this, but they’re going to be just as dead as the rest of us, aren’t they? How much are they going to care that this wasn’t your job to fix?”

The Seeker found themselves genuinely a bit short of breath at the end of this, but pushed on to the final point regardless. “If you think it’s zookeeping and you don’t believe UrGoh when they tell you it’s not—even though they’re the one who’s actually done it—then fine, call it zookeeping. But that doesn’t change the fact that it has to be done, and no one else can be the part that Skeksis are missing, because the part we’re missing is you, and no one else can be you. _Please_ don’t worry about whether Skeksis won’t have enough work to do in this, because I can assure you we’ll have plenty. And if Thra gives me the chance, I’ll be riding their tails twice as heavily as we’re riding yours now. Make that thrice. They'll need it.”

It could have been their imagination, but they thought they felt just a tiny touch of _anger_ radiating off some of these lumps. They hoped that was…more good news than bad. UrGoh did want them provoked, or they’d said they did—but there still had to be such a thing as too much, some line that shouldn’t be crossed.

“The Seeker has brought up an important facet we haven’t yet studied,” said the Ritual-Guardian coolly. “Regarding purity, but not so much as a point of…inner satisfaction. Consider, Skeksis: you’ve essentially been telling us that you are absorbing the Wanderer’s light, so to speak. Well and good, if so. As the Alchemist said yesterday, however, surely such a connection must run in two directions. And if we absorb some of your darkness, just as you absorb our light, do we not become less fit for the very role your light half seems to be appointing to us? The…zookeeping?”

“I still have a strong objection to the metaphor,” the Seeker replied, “but I’ll try to work with it. Yes, maybe you would take on some of our qualities, but if the animal you're keeping is becoming less—savage at the same time, is that really a problem?”

UrGoh huffed softly. “And you always speak, UrZah…as if the gifts only flow in one direction…and the flaws, only in the opposite one. This isn’t just a matter…of improving the Skeksis. Seeking wholeness improves us also. _I_ am better…for walking with SkekGra.”

“You are?” UrZah murmured, echoed the next instant by a stupefied SkekGra: “You are?”

The Wanderer sent the Seeker a little twinkle-eyed smile that almost stopped their heart right there. Blasted Mystic.

Then they turned back to the Ritual-Guardian. “Of course. We UrRu…are rarely uncertain about… _how_ to live. Where we stumble is the _why_.”

UrSen, who had been engaged in deep contemplation of the dirt between their feet all through this debate, looked up through a dusty fringe of hair.

“For far too many trine,” continued UrGoh, “I’d told jokes to those I met on the road…but forgotten how to laugh myself. Sung touching songs, to earn food or shelter…yet never shed one tear of my own. I’ve denied myself joy—for no particular reason…and rarely even ask myself what I desire. I’ve advised others to open their hearts while…letting mine go cold. All for fear of…somehow harming something…just by touching it…or simply of…being selfish. That is a thing…the Seeker has _no_ trouble with.”

They gave a slight chuckle, then a sigh. “And being with them, I’ve seen that…while some selfish desires are…not to be indulged, many others do no harm. And some are infectious…in a good way. I have _re-learned_ joy, my kin…at SkekGra’s side. Simply by feeling their pleasure…as though it were my own. If Thra is very kind…perhaps one day…I’ll even know again…what my own feels like. Then I may return SkekGra’s gift…and they can delight in my delight.”

There were many, many things the Seeker would have loved to be able to say to UrGoh just then, so crowded together on their tongue that none could escape into sound. Just as well, given the circumstances.

“Then you’re saying our trouble is, we’re not _selfish_ enough?” UrIm frowned. “UrGoh, I don’t…”

“Don’t we always say…that being as we are is unnatural? That we should have…remained UrSkeks?” the Wanderer reminded them with an affectionate look. “I’m only agreeing…with us. And were we UrSkeks now…we would have selfish desires. Would we not?”

“Well, yes. And we’d probably still be losing the battle with ourselves, just as we did before the sundering,” the Healer said dispiritedly.

“We _are_ still losing the battle with ourselves, and even _worse_ than we were before.” SkekGra thought for a moment someone else had said it, and then realized someone was actually them, and then wondered who in Thra they’d meant by _we_. “You—just don’t have to watch it up close anymore. But it’s still going on.”

“Precisely. And little wonder,” UrGoh put in. “How can you contain harms you won’t…let yourself see? And I am also…agreeing with Thra, my kin. I don’t mean…just…the vision. Look at the other peoples…the ones you’d leave…all this work to. How did Thra make _them_? Even the merriest Gelfling…is sad about something every day. Even the angriest…says a soft word to someone…before they go to bed.”

“Oh, yes. And especially the childlings,” said UrUtt with a quiet intake of breath. There was an astonished halt at that. The Weaver rarely spoke unless spoken to.

They noticed everyone staring at them and immediately ducked their head low, as though they’d been caught at something terrible.

“Speak, my kin,” the Wanderer encouraged them, smiling.

The Weaver glanced at the Master, who nodded. “Yes, speak.”

This didn’t reassure UrUtt one whit, but it did command them. “I—I just recalled, a Gelfling once telling me that a childling is all possible people, all possible selves, in a single day. And that growing up is as much a matter of deciding…which selves to _discard_ , as it is of anything else.”

SkekGra was taken aback. “…Must’ve been some Gelfling,” they remarked.

“Yes…she was,” mumbled the Weaver shyly. They couldn’t look at anyone.

So far, when one of the UrRu had had a vulnerable moment in these discussions, they’d always gotten some sort of compassionate gesture from one or more of the others. A touch, a sympathetic _look_ at least. But there was a different air about this one. No one seemed inclined to offer comfort, and indeed most of them looked restlessly away. SkekGra wondered what in Thra the crime could have been there. Maybe the mention of children was the misstep? Skeksis, whose plan after all was to live forever and own everything, were just as happy to have no reproductive capacity. But perhaps UrRu felt differently about it. ( _Had_ UrSkeks had children? The Seeker remembered fairly clearly that there were always new UrSkeks coming into being, Awakening it was called—but they couldn’t recall where the newly-woken came from. Whether they were seeded in any real sense by a _specific_ UrSkek, or multiple UrSkeks, or spontaneously arose from some primordial stew of esoteric math. UrSkeks were just Grotting _strange_ when you came down to it, and here they were trying to become one? Surreal.)

Actually, there was one sympathetic look from one sympathetic Mystic: UrGoh, who hummed their agreement. “She was wise. And we will want…the wisdom of the Thra-born…in this. Not just because…they were always of Thra. But also because…they still have what we…lost so long ago. They are whole. Their light and darkness chase each other…on the _inside_ …creating _by_ that turbulence, the one identity they were…meant to have. It’s another reason…we must tell them…the truth.” _Merciful Thra_ , thought the Seeker, _my other half’s a Grotting philosopher. I might be the one always playing catch-up there—will that be enthralling or exasperating? Only time can tell._

“I believe,” said UrZah, “it’s time we broke again until the next zenith.”

SkekGra barked a laugh. “Broke again, heh. Good one.”

Stony silence enveloped them.

“Oh. Sorry. I—thought that was an on-purpose jest.”

They were pretty sure they heard UrSu literally grumbling as everyone got up.

* * *

SkekGra had been assuming the break was for lunch, but UrGoh conveyed the disheartening news that in the Mystic village, there were only two meals a day.

_“Two?”_

“Unless…there’s a fast…for a ritual. Why…how many do they have…at the Castle?”

“At the Castle? Four usually, sometimes five. On campaign, it’s catch as catch can. And on the road, approximately whenever I Grotting well feel like it.”

“Yes, that…I’d noticed,” said UrGoh wryly.

“Fine. Well, I’ll be back for the next zenith, then.”

The Wanderer nodded. “I may see if I…can have a quiet word with UrIm, or UrTih.”

“Sounds worth trying. Best of luck with it.”

And so the Seeker went to seek sustenance as they had the night before, ranging out downhill towards the creek this time. They quickly came upon a patch of ripe bluemellows, burrcaps, and Nebrie-grass (oh, for an actual Nebrie, even a larva!), and nearly feasted on that—but noticed just in time that it was deliberately planted in a circle, around a carved stone with several colors of what smelled like quite edible moss growing on it. Probably some garden for the village, for UrNol’s or UrAmaj’s stores.

Beyond that, it was once again slim pickings. However, they didn’t come up entirely empty-handed: they found a foraging Snoutling, but grudgingly ruled that out for being too messy and time-consuming a business; a few little Katyaken eggs, thankfully not gone over; a couple of screechrats hiding under a stone…

And ahh, at last. Lefar worms. A little brood of them writhing in a wallow left by the rain and some bulky beast, devouring the tiny clumps of swimming animate algae that lined it. Creatures that tasted even better raw than cooked. That would do.

They took the juveniles two at a time, one in each hand, easing down their throat and falling in with a slurp, then turned to the mother, which was nice and big and mature, indeed too long to put away in one go. They easily tore it in half with their side teeth—

And heard a rustling in the brush behind them, something large.

They swallowed and whirled around with a hiss, reaching to their waist for a sword that of _course_ was no longer there. _Blast you, UrGoh._ They hissed again and readied their talons instead, rearing up even with the little hind ones that had become useless for much beyond throwing knives (which they also didn’t have) or killing a Spitter that had dropped onto one’s back.

Then a long-snouted head stuck out into the clear, preceding the rest of its owner as well as its owner’s staff. A thin curtain of hair bound up in stones and knots fell over a longer underlayer of light- and dark-brown tresses; beady, surprisingly childlike eyes sprang open wide—moving in a rapid triangle between the Seeker’s gaping, fanged maw with its long tongue vibrating in reflexive threat display, the talons of one hand sprawled out, and the other hand still clutching a twisting half-a-worm.

“Oh!” gasped UrSol the Chanter. Their neck retreated in haste. “I didn’t realize—you were busy—”

“What are you doing here??” SkekGra demanded. It came out less civilly than they wished it had a moment later, but both Skeksis and warrior instincts once woken were hard to calm immediately.

“I apologize!” the Mystic yelped. “I thought you were just walking down to the banks.”

“ _Some_ of us have to eat,” the Skeksis shot back. They gave what was left of their Lefar meal a surly glance and flung it away with, again, probably a bit more force than strictly warranted.

“Yes, I see that, I—I won’t trouble you—”

“What do you want? Why are you following me?” SkekGra bored a narrowing gaze into the Chanter. As they did, it came back to them that Mystics supposedly didn’t lie. The Seeker no longer believed that meant they were incapable of it…but it probably did make them, at the least, _bad_ liars.

“Did the Master send you after me?” they asked bluntly.

“What? No. Of course not,” protested UrSol in obvious confusion. “Why would they…”

“Oh I don’t know, to look for something, something to use against us perhaps? Is that your purpose?”

“No, they wouldn’t!” Then the Chanter paused, belatedly brought up short. “Or—if they ever did, it’s…not me they’d send for that.”

SkekGra gave a grim chuckle. “Yes, there you go. We’ve already established they don’t want any of this to go forward.”

The Mystic shook their head and eased the rest of the way out of the undergrowth. “I haven’t talked to them about it yet. I’m sure they’re—hesitant, yes. They always have been on this matter. You must give them a chance, though… that is…if you do want the others to agree.”

“So you’re giving helpful advice now?” the Seeker canted their head doubtfully. “Are you saying you’re on our side?”

“I’m not saying anything, I don’t _know_ what to say. I don’t know…that I have a side yet.”

All at once, they stared at SkekGra again, then closed their eyes, bowing their neck in a clear gesture of chagrin.

“Oh. Now I understand.”

“Understand…?” echoed SkekGra.

“Your suspicion. You’re wondering—how much I am like—the other one, my other half.”

“Well. It had occurred to me,” the Skeksis admitted.

The UrRu nodded sorrowfully. “I don’t blame you.”

Of course, had this actually been the Chamberlain, the sorrow would be an act, guaranteed. If SkekSil ever did feel genuine sorrow anymore, their fellow Skeksis would be the very last to know, which come to think of it wasn’t the worst decision to make on that point. As they’d told the Mystics, SkekGra never personally confided in the others these days either. (They just didn’t _pretend_ to still be doing it.)

But it was important to remember that this wasn’t SkekSil, it was the light half of…SilSol? Did they remember anything about SilSol, specifically? Had they been close? There was an impression of song, gorgeous song, oh yes, no one ever hoped to exceed them there; and perhaps of some shared but unspoken doubts about the rightness of their exile. That was all the Seeker could call to mind right now.

They sighed and said, more gently, “All right. Then what was it you did want?”

“I just wanted—to ask you something. If that’s all right.” UrSol’s front hands clasped and rubbed against each other anxiously. They didn’t look up.

There was a moment of silence.

“Well, are you going to ask?”

“Oh. Yes. I wanted to ask you—as one who really knows the Castle…”

“Yes?”

“If you meant what you said earlier. About our dark halves not being…too far gone?”

The Seeker’s brow folded. “Of course I meant it. I certainly wouldn’t be trying to convince a bunch of Mystics I’ve never met if I hadn’t convinced myself first. And I thought it a fool’s errand to begin with too.”

“And…my own dark half? Even the Chamberlain, you think they could be brought back…” Now they dared to look up. “to unity? To wanting to be whole, with me?”

“In time,” SkekGra answered. “I won’t pretend they’ll be one of the easier ones. It might be dangerous to approach them too early on, before we have a real—faction going. They might betray the effort, if they think there the advantage lies. Yet…”

Come up with something redeemable, some scintilla of hope that wouldn’t be a lie. What _were_ SkekSil’s good points? It would have been easier to say long ago, but none of the Skeksis were the better for wear. In court or out of it.

“Yet they do…always do what they truly think is best for Skeksis, for the Empire,” they finally said. “All their plotting and grasping for power, because naturally they’re the only one who isn’t an unworthy idiot, aside. It’s not _just_ for themselves. They believe they’re building a great civilization, and they think when it’s done everyone will love it, and agree it was all worth it. It may be deluded, but it is something like a hope? A dream?”

 _That_ was something they could now recall admiring and sympathizing with in the Chamberlain, many trine ago. Once, that goal hadn’t been quite so…sullied by all the treachery SkekSil had committed en route to achieving it. SkekGra finished: “I know the Empire hasn’t been anything one should want to protect in the eyes of the UrRu, but for us it’s all we’ve ever had.”

“I suppose in your eyes, it would be,” said UrSol quietly.

Blast these Mystics. Every time the Seeker talked to one it always brought something up, and usually not the relatively dignified memories of being GraGoh. No, now they were seeing flashes of those pathetic earliest days of the sundering, before any of the Skeksis knew to dare dream of Empire. Before they’d had any notion of what the word “Skeksis” was even going to mean.

The Conqueror to come hadn’t so much as foreshadowed themselves then. They’d been far too uncertain of _everything_. There were so many nights when they just had to get away from those other gruesome misbegotten beasts for a little while—to steal away to some dusty corner in the Castle for the night, bundled up in curtains or carpets (it wasn’t like there were any Skeksis-sized _beds_ yet)—and weep silently till blessed unconsciousness came. Weeping why? Because of this terrible, awful sense they had that once they’d known who they were and what they were meant to be doing; they were _positive_ they’d known this; and now they knew nothing of the kind.

Back then even going out and tramping the roads of Thra held only fragile comfort, because they would hear the voices of Gelfling—or even Podlings!—and rush to hide. Not because they were afraid of Podlings, but because they were afraid to be feared. They didn’t want to be _fled_ from by what they very well remembered to be the kindly people of Thra, the same people who’d so revered the UrSkeks. And even supposing those good innocent folk didn’t flee, but stayed to talk, what then? What could they possibly say when asked what they were, where they came from, why they didn’t resemble any of the other species that walked upright?

That was what the Empire had given them all, what the _Emperor_ had given them all, to be exact: a definition. And an explanation, even if it was utter claptrap. They could go out proudly to the other peoples and announce themselves as the Skeksis, the appointed heirs of the Crystal and its Castle. They were a nation that could be treated with, a nation of fierce prospective guardians and lords. Not a vastly-outnumbered motley of addled half-creatures who had no idea how to manage themselves, never mind anybody else.

That was a quality to SkekSo, a gift of theirs that the Seeker had honestly forgotten about. A gift with long, bloody strings attached to it, which should never have been created at all…but meant and received as a gift, nonetheless. And, they supposed, grown and maintained in part by SkekSil’s diligent skulduggery. SkekGra too had certainly put their own talons into it early on, and probably for some very similar reasons.

“But surely SkekSil…” the Chanter began anew, then winced. “That is, I know they think me a fool and, and a pretty useless one at that. But I’ve always imagined…they must hate me too?”

“Hate you? For what?” SkekGra leaned against a tree.

“You must know for what,” returned UrSol with a disconsolate glance.

“Oh, that. The part where all of you tried to kill all of us?”

“…You say it as if it’s a joke.”

The Seeker snorted. “A hard-won joke. UrGoh and I have taken our stripes there, we deserve to laugh about it now. At least for our own case. Listen, the truth is, I don’t know how the Cha—how SkekSil feels about any of that. I told you, we don’t have heart-to-hearts. And I can’t promise your path to unity would look anything like what eventually brought UrGoh and me together. We found out what we share, but.” A thought suddenly struck them. “Aren’t you—a musician?”

“Well, yes.” UrSol plainly couldn’t help a little smile at that. “Chanter, and all.”

“It’s funny,” mused the Seeker. “The Chamberlain isn’t, not that I can ever recall. Not much of a singing voice, to begin with. They don’t even rehearse the court musicians. They’re just…politics, politics all day long.”

“Sounds completely awful,” the Chanter commented ruefully. SkekGra chuckled.

“You’re right, it is. But it’s funny. UrGoh and I both like traveling, wandering. You’d think you two would share the love of music, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe not.” The Chanter shifted their weight to their other foot, holding on to their staff with both left hands. “I don’t know if we ever talked to you, or anyone about it in the—before. But by the time we were sundered, I had…” They cleared their throat. “SilSol had.”

And yes, there it was, the resonance of a name spoken after so many trine of forgetting, a high keening knell. Did the Chamberlain hear it, stuffed away in their cluttered office many leagues hence, hatching their fancy plans? It felt more likely than not, actually.

The Mystic didn’t let it fully dissipate before hastening on. “ _We_ had more or less given up on our music. No more heart for it. We were so homesick we could think of nothing else. —Now, I can barely even remember home to miss it anymore. Irony is cruel, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” The Seeker tried to think of something wise to say to that, but nothing came, nothing big enough to span it anyway. “Yes. It is. I’m sorry.”

“I, UrSol, I do at least sing and play. And I compose…liturgically. For our rites and healings and so on. But ballads? Songs of tenderness? Dances?” The Chanter’s longing was almost a physical thing that SkekGra could have reached out and touched. “Not for an Age. Not—much of that going on in the village anyway, I’m afraid. That’s part of the problem. Who here needs such things?”

The pause then was long enough for the sound of the flowing creek to reach their ears. It had been there all along, of course. There was always music around, but one didn’t always hear it. Once even the Skeksis had loved to dance together at court in all their youthful finery. But those were coming further and further apart too.

“Well,” the Seeker said at last. “I can say this much. I can’t promise that SkekSil will want to see more of you. But…I wouldn’t mind it.”

UrSol peered up at them, their face full of mixed emotions. There was enough of the Chamberlain in them for that—they weren’t completely sure they should believe SkekGra’s words at first blush.

“And _I’m_ definitely a Skeksis,” SkekGra added. “So there’s hope, eh? Give me a tune. I’m no singer by your standards either, but I can probably get across the idea of it. Oh, and give it to UrGoh too. They _do_ sing prettily.”

“Give you—a tune?” the Chanter asked, puzzled.

“Yes, you know. Something they might remember. Something you like? That SilSol liked? Who knows, it might turn out that your other half has…missed it after all. We don’t even have to say where we got it. Just the reminder could be enough to start with.”

UrSol mulled this, fidgeting back and forth. “I’ll…I’ll consider it. It’s kindly offered, in any case. And I thank you for that, SkekGra the Seeker.”

“Yes, consider it,” the Seeker nodded in satisfaction. This might or might not go anywhere, but they’d be able to report to their other half that they’d had, and more importantly taken, this opportunity to try to make inroads.

“You do seem…” The Chanter spoke even more diffidently now, but with a visible effort made themselves finish it: “…happy together.”

 _Happy_ was a strange word to attach to it, in SkekGra’s estimation. Then again, up until very recently that word had belonged mostly to bloody victories, the planting of flags, the rush of danger. Were they happy now?

“I suppose we are,” they acknowledged. They were still thinking it through even as they said it. “Or at least, we’re…closer to peace. I _am_ more whole with UrGoh, and astonishingly they seem to be more whole with me. I think I’d given up on ever feeling like that…many hundreds of trine ago. Now I know I needn’t have suffered so long. This was always here waiting—I just had to reach for it. And it took an act of Thra, but I did. Yes, I think perhaps I am happy, Chanter.”

UrSol sighed. “And I am jealous, and that is never a comfortable place for a Mystic to be. But I don’t know that I deserve comfort. I’ll see you back at the village shortly, Seeker.”

Well, this was _all_ deuced uncomfortable, for Thra’s sake—so much so that SkekGra was sorely tempted to break the heaviness with some cheeky wave-off. But they forbore, giving UrSol a deep, off-axis nod of respect instead. “Till the hour.”

If they hurried along the moment the leisurely swishing sounds of the UrRu’s leavetaking receded, there was probably even still time to finish a tolerable lunch.


	8. Closing Arguments (New Evidence)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which: I'm sorry, UrGoh buddy.

_Forum III — The Fracture Between — Third Brother’s Zenith_

“UrGoh, please,” said UrYod with a pained frown. “It’s not a reasonable question. The Gelfling are a completely different species from us—from UrRu _or_ UrSkek.”

“No, my friend,” UrGoh insisted, knocking the ashes out of their pipe. “No different from UrSkeks…in _this_ regard. I have…watched them closely…for many a trine. They, too, are light and dark entwined. They love…and they hate. They can heal…and they can kill.”

To no one’s surprise they went for a refill, sticking the pipe-bowl into their leaf-pouch and scooping more leaf into it with their index finger, while their eyes continued to rest on their fellow Mystic. “So then. Would _you_ —UrYod the Numerologist—advise them…to ‘purify’ themselves…as we have done? Shed off their darker natures…into separate creatures?”

The Numerologist winced minutely. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t—wish this on anyone. But there is no need either way, because none of them have darker natures as wicked as the Skeksis. Pardon me,” they belatedly directed to SkekGra.

“No, no,” the Seeker replied in what the Wanderer had begun to recognize as their tone of deep sardonic amusement. They were, as always, seated on the upwind side of their UrRu counterpart, but they still had to wave the cloud from the pipe’s relighting away with a desultory flap of the talons. “ _Wicked_ is probably on the polite side for it.”

UrGoh huffed a little. “The _Skeksis_ …were not as wicked…as the Skeksis…before we cast them out of our selves. Did…the UrSkeks…murder? Did they…plunder…the peoples of Thra?”

“No, but the Skeksis now have, and it is the Skeksis of _now_ , not the darker natures from our remote past, that we’d be reuniting with. They’re so much worse than they once were.”

“That…obliges us more…not less,” UrGoh answered flatly. “Otherwise they’ll become…worse yet. But what SkekGra and I bring you, my kin, is hope for…something _better_ than…merely stopping the decay. This is not just a chance to save Thra from the Skeksis…but for the _Skeksis_ to save Thra…and with it, themselves. A chance for…everyone, everywhere.”

“But I don’t understand what you base this on, UrGoh, this idea that the Skeksis are only getting worse because they’re apart from us, and that coming together again will necessarily reverse it.”

The Wanderer and the Seeker exchanged long-suffering looks.

“ _I_ don’t base it,” UrGoh explained yet again. “The Seeker does.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here, so you can ask me,” agreed the Skeksis. “Though I thought I’d explained. Maybe I’ve left out something I assumed was obvious. Even the worst of us doesn’t want to rule a smoking husk!”

The Wanderer certainly didn’t want to get caught looking directly at UrSu while SkekGra was saying _the worst of us_ , but they did risk a sidelong peek. The Master gave the Seeker’s reassurance on this point nothing but a world-weary blink. UrGoh remembered what their old friend had said in their quarters the night before, about the Emperor being beyond redemption or even containment. _Did_ UrSu think SkekSo would be perfectly content with a smoking husk, so long as it was _their_ smoking husk?

They burned to ask them exactly that, here and now, suddenly regretting the hasty promise they’d made not to share any of that discussion (or UrSu’s culinary malpractice) with the others. The Master was right, they told themselves dolefully. They _were_ too rash. So eager to seem less of a—a _threat_? Was that really the word?—to UrSu, so eager to prove their goodwill, that they’d unintentionally conspired to keep relevant information from the others. And they couldn’t even complain that the Master had somehow backed them into it; they’d made the offer entirely at their own prompting. …Blast.

They gave themselves a mental poke in the ribs and forced their attention back to the discussion.

“We just…have to finally accept that’s where our path leads if we don’t change it,” the Seeker was saying. “And remember how much better it felt when we still listened to—to you. About these things. When you’re right, anyway. Which you usually are,” they allowed in a sour aside.

“Often, let’s say,” the Wanderer chuckled wanly.

“ _Much_ too often.”

“But not always.”

“And that does actually…feel better for you?” asked the Peacemaker, with a doubtful slant of their pyramidal snout. “That’s not my recollection of—the part of me that became the General. I only remember the constant struggle against it. The fighting, and the hurting.”

“I know. We fight, Skeksis fight, I’m sure we’re exhausting,” SkekGra sighed. “But maybe that’s the problem? If we don’t have you to fight, we go fight with everything else. And the answer is yes. It’s completely bizarre, but it _does_ feel better, fighting with UrGoh actually feels better than…winning a war.”

They looked a bit surprised at themselves. “Or perhaps it just feels more right, and it feels better because it’s right? I like the not-fighting part too, even better really…oh, never mind, maybe you _shouldn’t_ ask me. It’s hard to describe. I can only tell you it’s true, and I never would have expected that. Ever. I’m sure the others won’t want to believe it at first either. But again, oh it’s hard to—”

They cut off in frustration. Yet when they went on, it wasn’t anger in their voice, but a yearning that nearly overcame its natural harshness. “If even one of you would just try it, you’d see! It’s like a call from the Crystal when we see you, see our light half. I was only able to resist on the other occasions we’d met because it was so brief and so—so standoffish, and I was bound and determined to be contrary.”

“Like a call from the Crystal in what precise way, Seeker?” probed the Alchemist, scientific interest clearly aroused.

“In many ways. Maybe in all ways! Maybe it _is_ literally a call from the Crystal, just one you don’t hear with your ears but with—something else. I’m not exaggerating. If you understood the power you really have…it’s probably exactly why we drove you out in the first place, why we’ve tried to force you out of sight. Not just because we don’t want the other peoples of Thra to learn who you are, but because we know we couldn’t…hold out if you were there. For very long.”

“I see. —That is, of course, not the explanation any other Skeksis has ever given for any of this,” UrTih noted with a phlegmatic twist of the brow.

The Seeker threw up their hands in a kind of wretched half-desperation. “Yes, I know, it’s because _we lie_!”

UrZah gave a quizzical hum. “Except for right now, presumably?”

The clawed hands dropped into the skirted lap. “Oh for Thra’s sake,” grumbled SkekGra, before UrGoh could begin to decide whether to intervene on which side of things. “This is becoming absurd. You won’t listen to me about the Skeksis because I am one, and you won’t listen to UrGoh about the Skeksis because, what, you have so much more experience with them? Who will you listen to? Must we go wake up Mother Aughra, who only helped us with the experiment because we _hid_ its full purpose from her, and who’s been telling us ever since that it was a huge, stinking mistake and we ought to rejoin? I thought you lot took her more seriously than we did.”

“We certainly do not think the wisest Mother Aughra is wrong in this,” said the Ritual-Master, a trifle stiffly. “But we also have no way of knowing whether she is right; or rather, whether her idea of the _timing_ is right. Again, Seeker, it is the Skeksis and not the Mystics who dispute that the division was a misfortune.”

“ _Is_ a misfortune, and her idea of the timing’s only ever been _immediately if not sooner_ , but that isn’t my point,” the Seeker snorted. “You still haven’t explained what your reservation actually is. You say I could be lying, and yes, I could, I’m a masterful liar, although wait a moment—”

They turned to gape at the Wanderer. “Haven’t I been steering clear of even the diplomatic fibs, because you told me that’s not polite here _and_ that almost nobody can lie to a Mystic?? —Never mind, that’s not my point either! My point is, exactly what do you think I _am_ here for, Ritual-Guardian? Why would I come all this way just to lie? You think there aren’t more entertaining people I could go lie to?”

UrGoh coughed on their own smoke. Once, twice, three times—they tried to stop, but that only made it worse, and turned it into a paroxysm of awkward enough length to send UrAmaj scuttling to the kitchens for a cup of water.

“I admit it’s been a while, but I thought it was bad form to laugh at your own jokes,” remarked UrSol.

“UrSol,” was UrIm’s one-word reproof.

“I’m sorry,” the Wanderer grated a bit painfully, between sips, “sorry. Don’t let me…interrupt…”

The Seeker, for their part, seemed more discouraged than jovial. “But it isn’t a joke. I really don’t understand what you think I’m about here, if not honestly trying to persuade you to reunion. Or what kind of trap you think I could be laying for you if you _did_ agree.”

“For what it’s worth,” UrIm said quite seriously, “I think you’re right, Seeker.”

They followed up the instant of pin-drop silence this produced with an immediate, “That it’s not helpful to distract ourselves inventing scary stories about what your motivations are, I mean. For one thing, this argument should be decided on the merits. It’s too important to decide on anything else. Even if you were plotting something, that wouldn’t mean it might not still be the right thing to do for Thra, or for our—all our selves. For another, while you are a stranger to us…UrGoh is not. I’m having difficulty even _imagining_ …what kind of malice any Skeksis half could inject into this UrRu’s soul, to cause them to come to us with treachery on their lips or an intent to wreak harm in their heart. _And_ —” They held up a hand as several of the Mystics looked primed for a quick reply. “If it is _not_ malice, then we must ask ourselves what it is, because it is assuredly something, and that something is likely not trivial.”

UrGoh at once felt an almost dizzying rush of gratitude for their old friend—the Healer was such a warm heart, and had always been exceptionally understanding of the Wanderer’s eccentricities and absent-mindedness. But in the wake of that joy came a disheartening void, as they realized that part of why this so touched them was that they were nearly the only words of support they’d received through any of this ordeal.

They had little chance to think about that, however, as UrZah held their hand up in turn. “These are wise words, UrIm. Thank you. We will speak on them further. However, the third brother is now in decline, and we must bring the forum to an end.”

They nodded toward the Wanderer and the Seeker. “I would recommend, therefore, that you now make whatever arguments you may have for a closing.”

And here it was. It felt to UrGoh as though the journey here had taken both far too long and not nearly long enough. Dozens of lines of discussion blurred and crossed and telescoped in and out within the diffusely-lit cloud of their mind, to the point where they already couldn’t remember exactly who’d said exactly what under which sun, or what they’d replied (or only _thought_ of replying).

But whether they’d done well or poorly, they were finished now.

“Yes, UrZah,” the Wanderer answered the Ritual-Guardian. “Thank you. We will do so…although…” They gave one more little cough and cleared their throat. “I would call it not so much a closing _argument_ …as a _remembering_.”

UrGoh reached for SkekGra’s hand. The Skeksis cast a wary eye over the assembled Mystics, but met the gesture. The Wanderer surreptitiously crossed their tail over SkekGra’s as well, and the Seeker turned it into a full twist. They’d discussed it thoroughly beforehand in making up their minds to do this: for so long as true unity eluded them, any attempt to deliberately summon up the memories of their former self would probably require at least that much physical contact.

The Wanderer closed their eyes and went through a brief visualization and breath-exercise to try to center their spirit. (At least no Mystic would ever express impatience with that!) Then they slowly opened them again to face the Ritual-Guardian—who was impassive and unsurprised at being addressed to begin with, but quickly became less so once they realized what UrGoh meant by _a remembering_.

“ZokZah, you were stern, as we recall,” the Wanderer began.

Their voice was deep and smooth as ever; but instead of their usual hesitant, widely-spaced half-phrases, their speech now flowed in a still-languorous but even stream. “Perhaps even rigid at times. But only because you believed so very passionately that outer practices shaped inner reality, and you wanted so badly for all your beloved friends to be ready to return home in time for the Great Conjunction. You couldn’t bear the thought of anyone having to be left behind for their…failure to purify themselves.”

They labored to rummage something else from the back of the desk drawer, but couldn’t bring up anything further until the Seeker looked at them questioningly and their eyes met, and yes there it was, _there_. Of course. That was the only way left for GraGoh to look at themselves, after all.

“Yes. That’s why you refused to give up on even the most troubled soul,” they forged on with new energy, passing on the memory just as it came to them. “Because it had to be _all_ of us, together…then and always. You taught us—taught GraGoh—all the highest secrets of meditation and spiritual discipline. _That_ is who would live again, were UrZah to reunite with SkekZok.”

At the name _SkekZok_ they gave their dark half an inviting glance. SkekGra opened their painted beak, but at first nothing came out.

“I…” they stammered. They blinked a bit apprehensively at the Ritual-Guardian, who’d already been thrown into what looked like a most uncomfortable muddle of dismay and deep emotion. They had their staff drawn close to their wrinkled body like an instrument of protection, their neck folded beside it in an almost abashed posture. But they couldn’t bring themselves to look away—their eyes were glued tight to the odd pair before them.

“Well. SkekZok,” the Seeker finally said. “ _Is_ cruel. Sometimes almost…gleefully so. And dreadfully judgmental and fussy. It’s true. But they’re also—the only one who even tries anymore to curb Skeksis’ worst excesses? Who still actually… _cares_ whether we can, or will, control ourselves.”

UrGoh nodded and squeezed SkekGra’s hand to send back the comforting message that yes, this was the sort of thing needed. And perhaps all the more convincing because of the Seeker’s palpable discomfort with praising anyone, especially another Skeksis.

Then they turned to the Master, who wore an unexpectedly fearful face. Not that UrGoh didn’t understand how much the Master feared all this, or why. Indeed, they’d explained as much to SkekGra. But UrSu so rarely allowed themselves to openly _show_ any trace of fear, especially before the village. They must not have realized they were doing it. But the others had certainly noticed, and the silent gathering on the triangle of benches was beginning to feel less like the eternal calm of Mystics and more like the vigil surrounding a mortal deathbed.

The Wanderer took another deep breath and reminded themselves that emotion itself was _not_ an offense, nor a wrong against anyone; that strong feeling, if that came, would be considered natural for any whole creature in this situation.

“SoSu…even our halves have never been able to forget you. Some tiny particulars may have faded over time, but we still see your shining face in dreams and waking thought. Homeworld considered you arrogant, and perhaps they were right. But what really infuriated them about you was that you took nothing for granted, and you accepted nothing as holy writ—nothing was proven for you, until it was proven to you. You believed truth was not something that proceeded from authority, but that authority must proceed from truth. It…took heavy punishment indeed, the heaviest UrSkeks know, to drive you back to conformity…and even then, I’m sorry to report, you made a bit of a hash of it.”

UrGoh smiled sadly, then swallowed and offered up a silent prayer of _Thra, please help us, please speak through us._ “And we loved that in you from the first. We’d never met someone so elder and yet so curious and open-minded. You never belittled our wildest flights of fancy, you’d just talk it through until we realized we were being foolish ourselves.”

Heads were nodding. The Wanderer couldn’t actually look around because they were resolved to keep their gaze bravely locked to those impossibly ancient and sorrowful eyes—but in their peripheral vision they could see the bobs of snouts. Others remembered this, too. Yes, many of them _had_ been on the young side as UrSkeks went! And that was another thing that had magnified SoSu’s transgressions in Homeworld’s estimation. But Homeworld’s leaders obviously had no idea what it felt like to be treated as an equal at last, to not be constantly shut down with either _that’s already been tried_ or _that just won’t work_ …

“We knew that our banishment broke your heart,” UrGoh continued urgently, “and that you felt a little lost ever after. But you’d gotten us into this and by the Crystal you were going to get us out, so you couldn’t let us lose faith in you. Unfortunately, sometimes that did lead you to…pretend you were certain when you weren’t. Or that you hadn’t made a mistake when you had. And that had some—unintended consequences. But Master, that never made you evil or criminal. Homeworld was wrong to call you that. You were a wonderful person, and we never needed you to be perfect, we only needed you to be…SoSu. And it is SoSu who would live again, were UrSu to reunite with SkekSo.”

It had been a struggle to keep eye contact with the Master over all this. Now it was a worse struggle to tear it away, when those eyes had a thin but visible sheet of wet—albeit quickly blinked back. As much as UrGoh wanted to, they could not stop all this short and make it all about UrSu, because it _wasn’t_ all about them.

But it certainly could feel as if it were, in that moment.

They glanced a cue at the Seeker again. SkekGra was a little dazed, which was probably to be expected—that was the expression that always came over them when they’d suddenly remembered a raftload of GraGoh. The Wanderer allowed that they might be looking a little dazed themselves.

“Right.” The Skeksis shook themselves out, feathers rustling almost imperceptibly. “SoSu. Right. I mean SkekSo. I could probably sit here all night complaining about the Emperor and their faults. They’re vicious, deceitful, callous”—UrSu and several of the others visibly flinched—“oh yes, and arrogant and cunning and determined and irrepressible and…well, everything that won us an Empire.”

Their gaze slid over to UrSol for a moment. “And again, I know that’s not something to celebrate. But I don’t have to _celebrate_ it to say…it was still all for us. For their own glory, yes absolutely, but also for ours. They—they were determined that we should be able to hold our heads high again. We couldn’t creep forever among the UrSkek ruins like mindless beasts. That was just unacceptable. If we couldn’t have our old civilization anymore, then by the Crystal we’d make our own, and at least this time we wouldn’t have to submit it for anyone’s approval. There was probably…a lot wrong with that. But I think in their own way they’re still—what did we just say? _I got them into this and I’m going to get them out?_ A lot more things make sense when I think about them…in that light.”

It took a few moments for the air to return to its ordinary pressure after that, but it was a more active pause than before. The UrRu were all looking up and down the sides of their triangle, as if noticing new things about each other for the first time in an age. Thra willing.

Next UrGoh faced the Peacemaker. Yet another deep breath—whether it was a perfectly smooth one didn’t matter.

“VarMa, we remember you as well,” they said. “You could be loyal to a fault, and sometimes you rushed in too quickly to quash disagreements. But you had such steadfast belief in the power of our united action. You thought there was _nothing_ we couldn’t do, so long as we kept faith to each other, and to SoSu, and our cause…”

* * *

It had grown noticeably dimmer by the time the Ritual-Guardian rose from their bench, the ornaments that hung from their hornlike staff-head clacking with the motion, and came to the center to formally address the gathering.

“My dear kin, we have heard many arguments and been told many stories,” the shaman declared. “These are true gifts of the spirit, both when we agree with their meaning, and when we do not. Let us thank all who have offered their thoughts and shared their hearts today.”

This was met with universal murmurs of agreement and devotion. Some sounded like a simple “Blessings upon them;” some were a word or phrase in the language that UrRu reserved for sacred or momentous occasions. That was what the Ritual-Guardian did as well, punctuating the utterance with a gesture that consisted of their front hands coming together in an odd woven steepled pattern that somehow made them look like they had more fingers than they did, and their hind hands raising their staff toward the sky.

Afterward they continued, in less stentorian tones, “UrAmaj has had their stew on for us since the first zenith. It is now ready, and I’m sure we are more than ready for its sustenance. We will have dinner, and afterward a village council to decide this matter.”

The Wanderer didn’t so much straighten up as go into a distinctly shallower slouch, but their placid face registered startlement, and they even took their pipe out of their mouth. “To decide…tonight?” they asked.

UrZah looked at them. “Perhaps. It may well be.” They then offered the Seeker one of those unassumingly elegant Mystic bows.

“I hope you won’t mind, Seeker, if we ask you to withdraw some little way from the village so that the UrRu may have words among themselves.”

UrGoh looked unhappy about this as well, but SkekGra sprang up briskly, as though they’d entirely expected it. “No. No, that’s fine, I understand. Should I go get my bedroll and all?”

“That will not be necessary,” answered UrZah. “If we haven’t finished by bedtime, someone will come to bring you back under the protection of our roofs and stones for the night.”

“Oh, I see,” the Skeksis nodded. “I’ll just take along my waterskin, then.”

The stately Mystic made no vacuous remarks about the fact that the Seeker clearly had no intention of joining them for stew, either, but simply nodded back. “Thank you.”

Then the Ritual-Guardian turned and took a single, measured step to bring themselves in front of the Wanderer. They fixed the other Mystic with a gentle but weighty gaze.

“You go as well,” they said.

The Seeker had already started taking their leave with long businesslike strides, but this brought them spinning right back around in shock to see their twin shard’s jaw dropping slightly open. Their pupils widened precipitously as well, making their soft amber irises seem to darken, to become hollow holes instead of eyes.

The Wanderer’s mouth worked silently for a moment, as though it had nothing to impart beyond the volumes already being spoken by the rest of their frozen body, before they were able to force out a husky protest:

“But, surely—if this is to be a council of the UrRu…deciding the course of the UrRu…and I _am_ UrRu…”

“You and the Seeker are one, UrGoh,” said the Master. They were getting up as well, leaning rather precariously on their staff. “You have said this to us, many times now.”

UrGoh put down their pipe and made as if to stand, then changed tack and swiveled towards UrSu with an ashen look, stretching out their hands.

“And we are, Master…but that doesn’t mean that I’m not—still—”

They bent their neck to glance up at their dark half, who had been silently studying neither UrSu nor UrZah, but everyone _else_ seated around the triangle. Seeing the direction of the Seeker’s gaze, the Wanderer belatedly cast their eyes around to the rest of the company as well.

The expressions on their dearest friends’ faces were various and striking. None were happy. Indeed, some were visibly sad or uneasy or embarrassed. But none of them were outraged. Or surprised.

SkekGra came back to UrGoh and touched their shoulder. “You and I should let them do this the way they think best,” they advised, their usual rasp tamped down to a quiet burr. “We always agreed—it’s more a matter of our kin persuading themselves, than of us persuading them.”

UrSu, who was lumbering over as well, seemed a bit struck to hear this. “A wise and…gracious observation, Seeker. I thank you for your understanding.”

“Kind of you to say, Master UrSu.” The Seeker gave what they considered an abbreviated bow, then wryly crooked their jaw. “I’ve only begun to practice that, but I _am_ practicing vigorously. None of this goes anywhere without understanding, does it?”

“You speak true, SkekGra,” the Master answered musingly. “No, it does not.”

UrSu reached for, received, and warmly enfolded the Wanderer’s less-than-steady hand. “Go take your ease, old friend,” they told UrGoh. “You’ve labored long and hard for this whole endeavor, and that is lost on none of us.”

UrGoh gracefully inclined their head and neck to them, saying nothing. As usual for Mystics, the Master took no apparent offense and shuffled lopsidedly away.

* * *

“What do you think, my kin?”

UrSu was pacing in their quarters again. Without their staff, thankfully—that always made a distinctive thudding no one in the village could successfully ignore—but with their front hands clutched together and occasionally jouncing up and down in time with some especially unserene thought.

UrZah had propped their staff against the wall as well, then taken up one of the little three-legged stools that was in better repair than most. Their head and eyes reluctantly followed the other UrRu’s movements back and forth. “I think you need to _breathe_ , Master.”

“Mm?”

“You’re holding it in again. Deep breaths. Six of them, in through the nose, out through the mouth, hold the sixth—as though you needed the instructions, but nevertheless,” they finished dryly.

“Apparently I do need them,” replied the Master with a guilty chuckle. “UrGoh was right about that much…we can always count on you to remind us when we forget our own ancient practices and advice. And I thank you for it, my friend.”

“Never mind about UrGoh _or_ about me,” the Ritual-Guardian said brusquely. “First, breath.”

UrSu smiled. “Yes, UrZah.” They settled into a deep crouch on the floor, letting their bulk sink into the entirety of their feet and legs; curled their tail into a loose leftward spiral; made the symmetrical four-hand gesture that was the Mystic prayer for inner peace; and did as they were told. UrZah watched with a critical eye (even though the chances of UrSu failing to perform this everyday discipline correctly were astronomically low, now that they remembered it existed) and emitted a grunt of approval when it was finished.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you.” The Master was rolling their shoulders and neck for good measure, letting out the last of the blocked-up energies with a rather forlorn exhalation.

“ _Now_ —what is this question that has you knotted up like the Chanter’s hair, Master? What do I think about what?”

“Where we stand, going into council.”

“I…” UrZah shrugged a bit helplessly. “I think we’re all right, Master. But it is hard to say. I’m afraid Mystics have this tendency to keep their thoughts…and still more their _feelings_ , to themselves.”

“Disappointing news.”

“I regret being the bearer of such ill tidings.” The Ritual-Guardian looked out of the window, where the sky had now definitely begun to darken. “We should move indoors for the council, I think.”

“It is getting colder, yes.”

“And we’ll be able to close the doors.”

“They’re not going to eavesdrop, UrZah.”

UrZah’s neck arched into a frankly dubious curve at that. “You’re sure of that, Master? Why?”

“Because I know their nature.” The Master returned to their seat. “UrGoh…wants a scrupulously fair process. It’s what they always seek in any case; and this time it is more important than ever, because they know they can’t achieve their goal without genuinely changing hearts. They won’t risk anything that could lead to suspicion of themselves or their Skeksis.”

“And the Skeksis, whom UrGoh must know we already suspect?”

“SkekGra will obey their light half’s wishes in this.” UrSu looked away. “They don’t want to…disappoint them.”

“After half an Age doing exactly that—?” chuffed the other Mystic, cocking a half-smile.

“If you don’t see it, then you can’t have been paying attention,” the Master remonstrated. “And I know that you were paying very close attention.”

The Ritual-Guardian sat unreadably silent for a moment.

“Yes, I know—of what you speak, Master,” they finally allowed. “Their auras…”

Now it was the Master who scoffed.

“One hardly needs to peruse the auras, though you’re correct to note them. It is in plain sight. _They_ …are in plain sight now.” They turned their hands palm-up, as if to pantomime _plain sight_ , and gazed at them sadly. “Wherever they go, they will be living that truth for anyone on Thra to behold.”

The Ritual-Guardian looked outright frightened at these words. Clearly it hadn’t occurred to them yet, or they hadn’t taken the full significance into their spirit as well as their mind.

“That, too, is in their nature,” finished UrSu. “As it was in GraGoh’s. The choice, once made, is made.”

“But if that’s so…” UrZah’s words died in a suddenly dry throat. They tried again. “Master, if you’re saying the peril of that might have to change our course, I _can_ do a divination for it. A sand-painting—to try to affirm Thra’s will. If you want me to.”

“Calm yourself, UrZah. I have already been—”

“No one would question our taking another day to decide—"

UrSu held up their hand for silence. A knock came on the door a few moments later.

“Enter, my kin,” called the Master. The door opened to show the Chanter and the Cook standing together. One looked somewhat trepidatious, the other extremely so.

The Ritual-Guardian quickly swallowed and coughed, but their voice remained a bit rough—not as hoarse as the Master’s, but certainly not their usual deep commanding timbre either. “Ah. UrSol, UrAmaj. Yes, please join us.”

“UrAmaj has something to tell you, Master.” UrSol gently but implacably drew the shy Cook forward. “A dream they had last night.”

“A dream?” UrSu repeated, with an affectionate tilt of the head. “Have you told it to the Scribe, my friend?”

“Not yet,” admitted UrAmaj, and made as if to turn around right then and there, but the Chanter put a steadying hand on their shoulder and shut the door behind them.

“You know our way,” the Ritual-Guardian reminded them. “It should go to the Scribe first, before it has a chance to change in the telling.” They lifted an ever-so-slightly prim eyebrow at UrSol. “Although—that may now be a moot point?”

UrSol gave a sober nod. “Our Cook has already told me, yes. But none of the others.” They glanced at UrAmaj. The latter was one bundle of raw nerves, a bewildering emotional state for any UrRu. “I wouldn’t bring UrAc just yet in any case. Perhaps…just the four of us, for the moment?”

UrSu and UrZah consulted each other with a glance, and then the Master replied, “Very well. I always trust your judgment, UrSol. Tea?”

“Yes, Master. And thank you, Master.” They gave UrAmaj a little pat of encouragement. “Go on. Tell them.”

As UrAmaj clearly struggled to speak regardless, the Ritual-Guardian frowned in fresh puzzlement. “It’s all right, my kin,” they said kindly, stepping a bit closer. “Dreams come to us all unbidden. That’s what makes them dreams, not trances. We must never judge each other for what happens in our sleep.”

“Yes, I—I know, UrZah,” the Cook managed. They looked toward the Master, but UrSu had turned away to busy themselves with the tea.

“And yet you seem afraid,” said UrZah, still concerned. “Have any of _us_ given you cause to fear?”

“Oh—well—no, not—I mean—a dream—I’m not afraid of being blamed for a dream, no, never.”

This answer hung in the air a moment, as though politely waiting to see if anyone required anything further of it before dissipating. The Ritual-Guardian squinted at the Cook and frowned even more deeply, but ultimately moved on.

“Well, then, my kin. Let us hear it.”

UrAmaj took a deep breath and told them. At first the Master and the Ritual-Guardian wore tiny smiles (“Aren’t our heads full of wondrous storytellers, when we don’t trammel them?” UrSu fondly remarked when they heard about the ‘cooking for an UrSkek _and_ a Skeksis’ part of it), but they were soon looking a tad ill as the tale moved into living things being thrown into a boiling pot, and the poor UrSkek being dead. And then when UrAmaj spoke of a hideous gluttonous Skeksis—probably _their_ Skeksis, alas—plunging a Gelfling child into the stew, and their unassuming little village turning into an abattoir, both their faces drained of color completely.

“Now you understand why I insisted,” said UrSol in a subdued voice. They gratefully warmed their fingers on one of the glazed, somewhat lumpen cups that all in the village would forever remember with love when they thought of the Master’s rooms. For hundreds of trine, there’d been few woes among Mystics that couldn’t at least be eased with some hot tea from these humble vessels and a cozy chat after.

All fell silent for a while as they sedately drank, allowing their contemplations to steep in much the way the tea had.

“A harrowing nightmare indeed,” UrSu finally agreed once the four of them were finished, setting their empty cup down and shaking their brambled head. “I’m sorry, UrAmaj.”

“But—what if—what if it’s a dream of prophecy, as well as a nightmare?” the Cook pleaded. “What if it means the Skeksis are going to do something horrible to the Gelfling?”

The Ritual-Guardian sighed dejectedly, “Dear friend, I’m afraid our dark halves have _already_ perpetrated horrors on the Gelfling.”

When UrAmaj gave them a confused look, they explained: “They have _corrupted_ the Gelfling, distorted their very spirits. Made them partners in bloodshed against the other peoples of Thra, paying them for it in spoils and favors. They have encouraged little feuds among the Gelfling clans to grow and become deep-seated mistrust, then set them to eternal competition against each other for their masters’ favor. We have the Conqueror with us—go ask them if you wish. They can tell you the truth of what I say.”

“It’s fortunate UrGoh isn’t around to hear you still calling them the Conqueror,” the Chanter observed.

“The Seeker,” conceded UrZah. “Though—all love and honor UrGoh doubtless deserves for it granted—we have no idea whether their dark half will actually keep the oath of peace they’ve sworn. Either way, they know what I speak of regarding Skeksis and Gelfling, far better than I ever will.”

“But what if—” Now UrAmaj appealed to UrSol with a stare that all but cried _this was your idea, help!_ “What if now the Skeksis mean to do even worse than that?”

“What is worse than losing one’s very soul, allowing it to be hopelessly corrupted?” returned the Ritual-Guardian.

“And on that subject, _we_ know what we speak of, don’t we,” the Chanter said ruefully, to unhappy looks all round. “But our Cook has a point, my kin. This goes some terrifying way beyond any vision of the Skeksis I’ve ever heard—save for the one that the Seeker and the Wanderer just gave us. And I see no logical waking prompt to UrAmaj’s dream except…the arrival of those two.”

“Those _one_ ,” the Master murmured into their clasped front hands, their elbows propped on their knees. UrSol gave them an odd look.

“Yes. …I suppose so. But my point is that if it _is_ Thra, or our standing stones, speaking to us through a dream…and because _they_ are here…we should ask ourselves if it could be something of new significance? Not just—the same old everyday tragedies?”

“You call what the Skeksis have done _the same old everyday_?” UrZah’s eyes widened. “For all your drollery, it is unlike you to make light of such evils, UrSol…”

The Chanter was immediately chastened. “Forgive me, please forgive me, UrZah. Yes, you’re right, I didn’t mean to—”

“You are forgiven, Chanter,” UrSu cut in, mildly but decisively forestalling the Ritual-Guardian. “I fear none of us are feeling quite…ourselves at the moment.”

“That’s what I don’t _like_ ,” UrZah objected.

“Yes, I know. I know, my friend,” the Master assured them with a few upraised hands. They sent UrAmaj a sympathetic smile as well—the Cook was now fully wearing the expression of a Fizzgig in a room full of Arathim.

“But you do see what I was _trying_ to say, Master,” UrSol urged UrSu.

“I do,” the Master acknowledged. “And it could, indeed, be something new. I believe it is worthy of UrAc’s art because of that very possibility, and should be given to them with all speed, so that we can all meditate on it. On the other hand, such dreams can also be simply the capricious breezes of the unconscious, seizing on whatever—novelty is there to seize, and perhaps toying with the fears it would naturally evoke. Which it is, I don’t know yet…still less, what there could be that we here may do about it. What would you advise on the matter, SilSol?”

“I…well. I don’t know, either,” the Chanter confessed. “It’s as you say. Uncertain.”

“Perhaps more tea is in order, then,” said UrSu with a crook of the lip, and before they could even step in the direction of the kettle the Cook exclaimed, “Oh! Let me, Master,” and bustled across the room to take care of it.

“And what about you, UrAmaj?” the Master called after them. “What would you see done with your dream?”

The Cook’s head swung around on its stalk to give everyone a shamefaced look. “I? I was—only wondering whether I should bring it to _you_ , Master. The Chanter said I should. I’m not…a soothsayer. This is all far outside my province.”

“But the dream deeply troubled you, clearly?” pursued UrSu. “Even as you told it to us, I could see the pain in your eyes, hear it in your voice.”

UrAmaj hunched over a little and quickly turned back to the little tea-stove, poking and fussing with its coals. “I’m sorry, Master. But it was just…a very troubling dream—”

“It is, my kin. And you did well to bring it to us.” The Master glanced to the Ritual-Guardian for their accord.

“Yes. We thank you for telling us what your spirit revealed to you in slumber, UrAmaj,” UrZah nodded somberly. “Today you have given us food for thought as well as for the body.”

“Then neither of you _minds_ if UrAc and the others hear.” The Chanter had shifted into a more dispassionate mien, though they acknowledged the Cook’s refill of their tea with a friendly dip of the chin. “That’s my first question answered…thank you. My only other was whether—you think it might affect the outcome of our deliberations. Or should?”

“Well, the real question,” mused UrSu, “is what it would change about the essential decision before us. In a way, it’s simply a restatement of what the Wanderer and their friend reported in their own prophecy.”

The Cook hunched over a little further.

“Indeed,” the Ritual-Guardian concurred with a thoughtful look. “It is, isn’t it? And if that alters anything with specific regard to our Wanderer’s…proposal—and more crucially, how we should _answer_ that proposal—I’m not sure what it would be. But of course you are free to bring it up or not as you wish, my kin. Each one of us should say whatever we believe to be important on the matter before we draw any final conclusions.”

“Yes, of course,” said UrSol evenly. “You speak true, my kin, as always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just ooooooooone chapter left!! :-D But it'll be a lulu...


	9. Decision (and Decision)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mystics are Unimpressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: Double chapter update! What I'd been calling the "last chapter" was getting much too big--so I, uh, sundered it in two. So now you get Chapters 9 & 10 in tandem. And with that, we bring to a close the Mystic end of this ouch-filled phase of Gra/Goh's life. Hope you've enjoyed. <3

Far enough away not to eavesdrop, but easily found when needed: there were only so many places in the vicinity of the village where UrGoh and their Skeksis half could meet those requirements while they waited, and of them, UrGoh said this was the most peaceful.

The other Mystics must have agreed. Or at least, they’d taken the rare step of allowing their distinctive handiwork to show here in order to create a path and resting-spot over this deep, wide pool in the creek. Both the bridge and the long low bench along its downstream side—well, not so much a bench as a gently planed and rounded elevation, where one was clearly meant to sit and dangle one’s feet over the water—were carved out of a gargantuan log that had never been moved from where it first fell. One edge of its torn old roots still lay buried in the ground, and the whole of it was overgrown on each bank and across its sides with mosses, grass, and mushrooms. Because the thing was three times SkekGra’s height, rough-hewn but age-smoothed stairs had been cut out of it on either side, leading up and down.

And it hadn’t only been flapping Mystic feet polishing the wood over the many trine. There was graffiti from various Gelfling hands—some in the Imperial alphabet the Skeksis had taught them long ago, some in the Vapran hieroglyphs or traditional clan symbols. Here and there SkekGra could even spy a Podling contribution, little doodles and squiggles at a tellingly low height. Going by the lovesick (and lecherous) content of many of the scratchings, at one time this had been as much a local trysting place as a local fishing hole, but none of the writing was fresh. The other peoples of Thra had abandoned the area long since. Was that the fault of the Skeksis too, and all the bogey-tales they’d spread about the woodland wizards?

SkekGra perched themselves on the low seat with a handful of pebbles, dropping them into the water to try to make various ripple patterns. This had always been a strangely easeful pastime for them, something to do with the tiny waves crossing at regular intervals and angles. It might have reminded them of stargazing in the before. They hadn’t asked the Wanderer about it yet, but their own recollection was that GraGoh had been able not only to see the stars, but to _hear_ them as well—each point of light chiming like an eternal bell, each constellation’s component vibrations forming its own unique musical array. They were fairly sure the shapes they liked to make with their rock-ripples were favorite constellations from their travels, whose names they’d simply forgotten Ages ago. Although Thra’s stars weren’t the most beautiful GraGoh had ever beheld, by far, their Skeksis shard still thought they’d have rather liked to listen to them again. Just now and then.

But making the patterns would do for sanely passing the time here.

GraGoh’s UrRu shard, however, remained standing, turning round and shifting from foot to foot. Whatever peace was supposed to be in this place, it eluded them. First they smoked a bowl of one of their grittier leaf-blends in fitful little puffs; then they went to refill their pipe and (thankfully) stopped themselves halfway through. Unfortunately, they then replaced smoking with pacing.

Slow…

…thudding…

… _tail-switching_ …

…pacing…

…up and down the bridge.

At length something had to be done. “Aren’t _I_ supposed to be the one who can’t calm down?” SkekGra called. “You’ve done everything you can, UrGoh. Let it go. Sit down, at least! Don’t put _me_ in a dither too.” They gestured at the space beside them on the bridge.

The Mystic contritely stopped pacing and trundled over, maneuvering their ponderous frame to sit next to SkekGra.

“Apologies, my other half. I’m not used to…ah.” They frowned, searching for words. “You’ve seen that…the Mystic way is not to…try to control…well. Much of anything.”

“Why yes, I’d noticed. It’s one of the more annoying—oh.”

Revelation dawned upon the Seeker, and they passed their companion an interested sidewise glance. “Aha. It’s probably been a while since you’ve been this invested in getting a particular outcome, eh? Worked so hard for something you desperately wanted?”

“I thought…that part…had all gone to you,” sighed the Wanderer. “We’re not supposed…to become so…attached. But now…I am.”

SkekGra gave a humorless laugh. “Well. Welcome to being just like everybody else. Especially me. That’s been my whole life—wanting and chasing. One thing after another. It’s never finished.”

“How do you…cope with it?”

It sounded like a serious question, so SkekGra tried to think about it.

“I’m—not sure I do.”

Bah! Surely they could come up with better than that. “That is, I’ve always gotten over it eventually when I…” _(Lose.)_ “Don’t quite win, but up till then? It just feels terrible. Occasionally I can distract myself from it for a little while. That’s all.”

They studied their UrRu’s troubled face. “I—don’t know that there’s any getting around that, UrGoh. If it matters to you, then not getting it’s going to hurt. That’s why I’ve sometimes wished I could…not want… _everything…quite_ so much of the time. Like you. I’m just not any good at it.”

The Wanderer said nothing. For once, they looked quite lost.

“And this one’s hard even for me, Mystic,” SkekGra added with a crooked jaw. “It’s not just my personal druthers at stake. It’s not even _just_ for the Empire’s honor, this time. This one is about…all of it. All the world.”

“And that…I’m not used to either.” UrGoh looked away. “The…responsibility. It’s frightening. I don’t see how… _I_ can be equal…to this task. Perhaps GraGoh the UrSkek…could have fixed it all. But I’m…just…Goh.”

“Look,” said the Seeker after a moment’s nonplussed silence. “It’s nice and quiet here. The water’s pretty. Try to relax and enjoy it a little.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” The Wanderer sighed again.

Then they turned and settled down sideways, laying their head across the Skeksis’ legs, much to said Skeksis’ surprise.

“Enjoy it a _little_ , I said,” cawed SkekGra, though without much force behind it. UrGoh’s only response was a grunt as their body settled into repose. They were now embedded Nebrie-fashion, an old stone sunk deep in the soil, and not much could dislodge them after that.

“…Fine. If it helps.”

The Seeker decided to try to take their own advice and appreciate the scenery for a while. Even in their explorations of remote wilds, they’d always tended to hurry through the joyful moments of it as much as the tedious ones. They’d stop long enough to register the sight and to decide whether there was anything there they wished to acquire, and then it was jaunting on to the next leg. Anything new immediately piqued their curiosity; they savored the limitless potential of the unknown with all their overbounding elation; they _had_ to learn all about it, conquer it mentally if not physically; but then the thrill faded so soon. Much like their appetite for food, the Conqueror’s hunger for novelty and excitement was never long sated. But there was nothing like a heavy Mystic skull to pin one down and force a bit of reflection.

The literal reflection before them was lovely enough. The ghost of the first sister was fading in from the darkening sky, beginning to shed its light on the trees and the pool. A flight of windsifters crossed the clear dome overhead (probably an omen of _something_ by Mystic reckoning, but what could it tell them now that they weren’t about to find out anyway?), and the flight of their mirror-twins in the water rushed on apace, as though they’d all made an appointment to meet somewhere in the leagues hence.

Not as fanciful a conceit as it might’ve once seemed, now that SkekGra had indeed met their own reflection. Even if their uncanny resemblances were only on the inside, while their outsides might charitably be called a study in contrasts. The Seeker knew exactly why they and the Wanderer were arranged like this, right now on this bridge, and there was even a sense in which nothing at all unusual was going on here—normal people comforted themselves all the time, didn’t they? But they still doubted the pool in its thousands of trine had ever held such a sight, and certainly any passing traveler would be astonished.

They couldn’t help a wry little _graak_. “Look at us. What a pair.”

The Mystic swung their long snout out over the Skeksis’ knees to gaze down at the water and its languidly waving image. They hummed agreement with a faint smile, returning to their dark half’s lap. “Hard…to credit one’s eyes.”

SkekGra chortled. “Old story _there_. —What did you think, when you first saw it?”

A crinkling of the brow, and other than that, absolutely the barest muscle movement required to look up at SkekGra. “I don’t think I’ve…ever seen _this_ …before?”

“No, I mean you, the first time you saw you. Suddenly, a completely new face. Do you remember it?”

“Of course.” The Wanderer rumbled thoughtfully in their throat. “As I recall…it was a while in. After we built…our first village…well…our first _shelters_ …and planted our first garden. I was sent…to the lake…to fetch water for it, I believe…and then I saw.”

“You really waited that long? You weren’t even a little curious? Ugh. That’s so—UrRu,” scoffed the Seeker. “Well?”

“Well, I knew it had to be…somewhat like the others’. Probably. They’d have…mentioned it…otherwise.” They considered this. “Or perhaps not. Either way, it wasn’t too…surprising.”

“I guess it wouldn’t have been, by that point,” the Skeksis snorted. “You’re all such ascetics. Sometimes I wonder why you bother wearing all those fiddly ornaments. It’s not like you care how you look.”

“Oh. No. We care about our ornaments…a lot. They are rites, spells…and thoughts…made concrete…over many trine.”

“Ah of course. It’s _spiritual_.”

“I really didn’t…think much about it,” said the Mystic, coming unexpectedly back to the question. “Except that it…seemed fitting. I looked…as I now felt. Rather slow…a bit silly…a little boring.”

“Boring?” the Seeker chirruped, almost personally offended. “You’re not _boring_. You’re an intriguing cipher! An ancient mystery! Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I think…you flatter us. But compared to what I…seemed to remember…being before that…boring, yes. I didn’t _mind_.” Another darting glance, more playful this time. “Much.”

SkekGra had allowed their hand to rest lightly on the hair that cascaded down UrGoh’s neck, to no evident objection; now they found themselves absently stroking it, the way one would stroke the neck of a startled phegnese to soothe it. It lulled the Seeker into an odd calm as well, the invisible echo of their own touch that ran down their own neck. Odd because not that many days earlier, they’d still found such sensations as unnerving as they were unnervingly comforting. Today they wondered why it had ever bothered them. Two for the price of one was a bargain indeed.

“That helps, too,” the Mystic mumbled, and let out a whisper-quiet exhale of knotted muscles melting. “Do that.”

“All right. Easy enough.”

“Why? What about you? What did you…think?”

“When I saw?” SkekGra contemplated the pale plush mane they were petting. So fine, yet so thick and soft, and with a very coppery glint in this late light. They’d often wondered what it felt like, actually, and now they knew: a bit like braze-thistle down. “Well…it solved the mystery of why everyone was acting scared of me when I wasn’t even doing anything.”

“You mean the other Skeksis.”

“Yeah, and I was on the big side too. I’d been thinking _they_ were scary, that’s the funny part. Scary, toothy, angry… _yappy_ little lizards. We were all frightened and angry at first, though. Not even always at each other. But I don’t know if we could’ve ever named…what really had us so upset. It was easier just to fight amongst ourselves.”

They shook their head at the memory. “Only time we didn’t fight was when we felt threatened by something _else_. Then we’d clump together like porridge. But other than that. —Mind you, it probably didn’t help that we took a while really learning to…talk again? Till then it was just a lot of hissing and growling.”

“Mm. That was us too.”

“Hissing and growling?” SkekGra asked with the wide-eyed guilelessness of a Podling. The Wanderer genially chuffed back.

“Minus that…if I recall correctly. But still, like very young children…with anything but…children’s minds. Those were…strange days. For us, and for Thra.”

The Seeker tsked. “Some children. We must be the worst brats Thra’s ever known. Oh! And did it take you a little while to recognize…who was who, as well? Or remember who’d _been_ who? You know what I mean.”

“Not all of us. Some made themselves…fairly obvious…from the start.”

“Ha! We had a few of those too. I’ve still got the scars from one of them, come to think of it.”

“Then so have I.” UrGoh smirked, then sniffed and returned to a more serious mien. Their eyes were only half open by now, though they didn’t lose the conversation’s thread. “Then it was all more a surprise…for you, the new face. It didn’t seem…as fitting. Not…a match…for how you felt?”

“No, it did, I just hadn’t realized that I was…that it was”—SkekGra waterwheeled a hand in the air, trying to summon words that weren’t volunteering themselves—“…quite… _that_ …much. I wasn’t _happy_ that it fit. I suppose at least it wasn’t boring? You know about me and boring.”

A bit of heat rose to their sunken cheeks. “But I don’t know. For just those first trine, I might’ve been glad enough to trade scary for boring….to be a gentle UrRu, with other gentle boring UrRu. The ironic thing is I don’t think I had any better a memory of my—of our face, GraGoh’s face, than I do now. I just knew the new one wasn’t right, or wasn’t fair, something. Or I didn’t think it was. Obviously Thra disagreed.”

“I have wondered lately…” said UrGoh musingly, “why Thra didn’t make it the other way round. Might it not…have been more instructive?”

“Huh?”

“If you _had_ been made the UrRu…and I the Skeksis.”

“Oh Thra,” the Seeker exclaimed with automatic dismay. “Instructive, yes, but.”

Then they blinked. “I see what you mean, though. Then you might have had to exercise your…weaker side more, and I as well. That’s true! Well, throw that on our growing pile of reasons why we shouldn’t assume the Crystal really knew what it was doing. Or was in complete control of it, anyway.”

They scrunched up their eyes in sudden realization. “You know, maybe this was all very strange for _it_ , as well. Maybe it couldn’t help making it strange for us too.”

“Perhaps,” chuckled the Wanderer. Then, more hazily: “Just _having_ flesh was…strange enough…at first. I remember…very much…disliking _chewing_.”

_“Chewing?”_

“Chewing. So tiresome. Especially… _raw_ grass…which I fear was my…ill-chosen…first meal.”

“Ugh. Why am I not surprised.”

“Do you…remember yours?”

“Oh yes,” said SkekGra, and declined to go into details for the sake of their other half’s tranquility.

“You can use…the claws too,” the Wanderer murmured.

“Eh?” returned the Seeker in puzzlement. They were thinking UrGoh meant ‘…for eating,’ which seemed a bizarrely obvious statement to make, even for UrGoh.

“I mean right now,” the Wanderer clarified (mindreading yet again, perhaps).

“ _Oh_.”

This was unanticipated. But then again, Skeksis could enjoy a little preening from a fellow Lord of the Crystal in their scattered amicable moments, especially in the baths; and that usually involved some light combing with the claws. So it wasn’t a foreign thing to them by any means—just not one they’d ever expected an UrRu to invite. They cautiously threaded their fingers into the Mystic’s hair, letting their talon-tips just barely touch the scalp and neck.

Well, if the echo was any guide, this was quite a good idea on the Wanderer’s part. SkekGra could almost have fallen asleep to it themselves. As for UrGoh, they heaved another deep, weight-of-Thra-divesting breath—pouring out even more coiled tension that one would never have suspected they were carrying, until one saw the difference after it evaporated. Maybe no Mystic was really as tranquil as they always seemed? Though of course, SkekGra was hardly seeing them at their most relaxed. Not a fair sampling, possibly.

The Seeker reflected that they’d better not let themselves get caught at anything like this in front of another Skeksis. Or at least, no Skeksis who hadn’t already felt for themselves the beginnings of the peace that being with their other half ( _without_ shrieking at them) could bring. The uninitiated would find it not just disturbing, but disgusting. Touching one of these dirty wrinkled mollusks? These hypocritical rag-piles, who so obviously nursed a poisonous envy of all the Skeksis’ power and wealth and glory—for after all, who in Thra could not envy the Skeksis?

To say nothing of offering one of the miserable creatures kindness. Blasphemy. Heresy. Treason, even.

Alas, blasphemy came more and more naturally to the ex-Conqueror these days. Yet one more peril the Castle would present: they’d have to carefully guard against any little slips into what was fast becoming their…startlingly comfortable quotidian reality.

The Wanderer had finally begun to emit very faint snores, so the Seeker didn’t move when they heard footsteps. The tap of an UrRu staff on a hard surface was impossible to mistake now, anyway. The Skeksis simply waited as first the Ritual-Guardian’s staff-head, then their own head, and then their body crested the stairs. The Mystic paused there at the bridge’s far end, silently watching UrGoh and SkekGra.

SkekGra realized that UrZah didn’t know they were being watched right back—the Seeker’s side-mounted eyes could make closeup reading a pain, but the benefit was a much wider field of vision than any of UrGoh’s kind had. So they waited on in perfect contentment for a little while, and when they judged the interval embarrassingly long enough, they finally remarked:

“If you’re enjoying the view this much, perhaps we should commission a portrait? I know just the Gelfling for it.”

The dignified Mystic hummed awkwardly and ducked their head for just an instant. “Ah. Forgive me. I wasn’t sure you were…both awake.”

UrGoh gave the very lowest and most pitiful of moans, but rose up a little to blearily call back, “We’re awake.”

The Ritual-Guardian gazed down along the narrow spine of their snout at the two on the bridge. Either they didn’t realize they were frowning _quite_ so visibly, or they didn’t care if the Seeker saw. Maybe it wasn’t only the Skeksis one needed to be more careful in front of.

“Do not hurry on our account, my friend,” the shaman answered. “But we are ready to tell you our decision, when you’re ready to come hear it.”

“As well now…as ever,” said the Wanderer, heaving up reluctantly to their feet. (Blast, now the Seeker’s skirted legs felt cold by comparison, but at least that would fade shortly.) As the Mystic’s muzzle traveled past, they muttered in SkekGra’s ear, “That was—quick.”

The Seeker nodded and handed them up their staff. No doubt that _had_ been blazingly fast as Mystics went, which probably meant either very good news, or very bad.

UrGoh took their dark half’s hand once again as the two of them followed UrZah’s bobbing back and tail up the long winding path back to the village—but this time their grip unexpectedly verged on the cast-iron. Fear, most likely. But SkekGra could have sworn they detected a certain anger there as well. Or even… _defiance_?

Possibly all three at once?

* * *

All the sisters shone plainly now, though one of them had to peep through a thick fence of tree branches, and the commons of the Mystic village was bathed in their cool radiance. It glinted off the tops of the standing stones that rose above the surrounding forest’s canopy, lancing out to trace beautiful but (to Skeksis eyes) slightly menacing runes of protection and blessing in the crisp air.

The UrRu were almost exactly as the Wanderer and Seeker had left them, arranged on the benches in the commons facing each other, as though they’d be starting up a campfire soon (if only!), and surveying the rearrivals with a strange mix of docility and wariness. The Seeker looked over the faces they thought most likely to betray emotion, UrAmaj’s, UrIm’s, UrSol’s, but found them studiously blank for the moment.

UrZah remained standing, and UrSu creakily got up to join them. Taking the cue, UrGoh didn’t try to lead their dark half to a seat among the company as they had during the forums.

The Master, bent-backed as they always were, was still the largest of their kin—odd, given that their counterpart was far from the biggest Skeksis—and rose to a height a good head-and-a-half above the Ritual-Guardian’s. Their staff, which SkekGra had noted yesterday as long and heavy enough to do service as a weapon, swayed a bit in their two right hands as they spoke.

“UrGoh, beloved friend, and SkekGra, shard of GraGoh that was,” they began. “It gives us sorrow to say this…but we cannot join you on this treacherous path you’ve chosen. We must not. We have gambled the world once before, and we would be betraying all we ever learned from that cataclysm if we were to fall into the same error again.”

The soft hand inside the Seeker’s own was still tightly clenched and a bit clammy, but the Wanderer nodded shortly, doing their best to show in their demeanor that at least this wasn’t an unforeseen blow. They kept their voice gentle as well—though SkekGra doubted they were the only one hearing the slight waver of brutally suppressed emotion in it.

“I understand…if that’s your decision, Master. But may I…ask a few…questions about it?”

“It is the decision of all the UrRu together,” corrected UrZah. UrSu lifted their front-left hand by just the barest amount.

“So long as you accept this as the will of the village, and not subject to appeal,” the Master said graciously, “ask what you wish.”

The Wanderer stared into the middle distance for a few long moments, considering their words or schooling their feelings (or both). Then they spoke, courteously and measuredly:

“What if…one among our kin…changes their mind, and wishes to…make the experiment? Just…for themselves…and their Skeksis half?”

UrSu nodded in turn, though it was a nod of comprehension, not agreement. “You know our way. We are not the Skeksis. We don’t impose punishments. So we cannot actually keep anyone from doing so. But…they would know they were going against the desire of all their kin, and none of us wish to do that.”

The pause that followed was heavy with the unspoken. The Seeker almost fancied they could hear both a silently-appended “…except for _you_ ” from the benevolent Master—and an emanation from certain of the Mystics that not being willing to go against their kin might not be precisely the same as not _wishing_ to do it. But they hardly seemed about to defy the ruling either. Naturally. Being Mystics.

If UrGoh had caught any of that, they let it go to ponder their next question. “And if…we convince one of the Skeksis…to want a parley with their…other half?”

UrZah said flatly, “Again, we cannot stop any UrRu from going forth alone, as you always have. But with due respect to present company, we do not wish to receive any more Skeksis visitors.”

That gave SkekGra a tiny stab of hurt. Not so much at finding themselves unwelcome due to their species—even among the remnants of their once-best friends—because that was scant surprise; but just at having worked so hard not to give any trouble as a guest, and it not making any evident difference. (They also suspected the phrase “ _due_ respect” had been very carefully chosen so as to avoid any lying.)

Although the Wanderer gave an obviously displeased little hum, they didn’t otherwise protest. “What if Mother Aughra wakes up and agrees with us?” they asked.

“She has done so before,” the Master pointed out, “so that changes nothing. Her reasoning has only ever been that if the division was bad, then reuniting must be good, but if she’d forgive me for saying so, that doesn’t necessarily follow.”

“It doesn’t necessarily… _not_ follow either,” grunted UrGoh. “Leaving that aside, however…I still…want…to know…”

They looked down and slowed, even more profoundly than their usual, to a stop. The Seeker exerted all their training of the last few unum not to jiggle their foot, or work their talons, or let out any irritated little trills of prompting. They sternly reminded themselves that ironically, they were the _only_ one here that this actually bothered.

But when the Wanderer at last went on, it became clear why they’d hesitated so.

“How _do_ you see… _any_ of this…ever getting better, Master?” they implored—still ponderously, but in deep earnest. “Or even just…ceasing to worsen?”

UrSu gave them a rueful smile. “Well…how did _you_ see it getting better, my kin, before you came to us yesterday? The answers might be similar.”

SkekGra was close enough to their other half to feel and smell just the faintest mist of perspiration from their skin. The Mystic bore up under their embarrassment handsomely, though, not trying to hide it as a Skeksis would have, but not letting themselves be rebuked into dropping the subject the way an UrRu might, either.

“I didn’t,” they admitted quietly. “I think I’d…just given up. Stopped…thinking about it. And that is entirely…my own fault.” They stretched their neck up slightly to meet the taller Mystic’s gaze at level. “But are you saying, old friend, that you too…have given up? And no longer wish…to think about it?”

This time, the silence was not only heavy but chilly as well. The Seeker reflexively squeezed the Wanderer’s fingers—whether in warning or sheer sympathetic anxiety they couldn’t have said, but their instinct-driven nerves now jangled a vague alarm. Especially when UrSu then raised their own head just a _titch_ higher.

“We’ve been over this, UrGoh,” the Master finally replied. “I think about this…constantly. Many here have, and for much longer than you. But I still fail to see how we should reverse a disaster caused by our reckless toying with a planet’s very heart—by toying recklessly with it yet _again_.”

“And I do not see…how the Darkening will do anything but spread…while the Skeksis hold and abuse the Crystal,” pursued UrGoh. “Nor how it can be set right…without our help, or even…our counsel?”

UrSu sighed. It was not a doleful, Mystic sort of sigh. It could almost have come from the Emperor, in fact.

“And I have heard your objection again, just as before—but my kin, it is _still_ not ours to decide.”

“Nor is it ours to refuse,” the Wanderer countered, and looked away from the Master for a moment to appeal to the rest. “Didn’t SoSu always tell us that not choosing…is also a choice…with its own consequences? And they were right, my kin. That…was the wisdom a _whole_ spirit can give.”

 _Oh Grot,_ thought SkekGra. They hadn’t dared intervene in any of this—surely the last thing it needed was the Empire’s butcher putting their sawtoothed beak in. But the whole village now felt the tightness in the air. UrRu were drawing nearer to each other in a way that looked dangerously close to cringing. Did UrGoh even realize the insult they’d just offered their own leader?

Well, really it was a plain fact: everyone here _was_ only half a spirit, and by definition that had to mean they were all missing something. But as any Skeksis knew, plain facts could certainly be dire insults too.

“My kin, I fear you’re…no longer asking questions,” said UrZah delicately. “Except to question our decision—which you did agree not to do?” They were bolstered in this last by ready if somewhat pallid nods from UrMa, UrSol, UrTih, and even UrIm.

UrGoh’s hand shivered a little in SkekGra’s grasp, as did their neck and shoulders, but they stoutly demurred: “I agreed…to accept the decision as final. And I do accept…that you won’t seek reunion now. But shall we not even _tell_ anyone…of this Darkening? The Gelfling, at least?”

No one made a sound, though their faces told a tale indeed. Again SkekGra frantically considered saying something, anything, even something foolish, perhaps especially something foolish—just to put some kind of bump in the road of the argument. Even if the Mystics then turned as one to pour disapproval on the interloper, that might still be better than wherever this was headed? Wasn’t it to some extent their _job_ here as the Skeksis to be hated if needed? Perhaps now was that time?

But again they bit their tongue. Besides, the Wanderer had been so patient through all of this, so much more patient that SkekGra could have been. If patience alone were to win the day here, it probably would have by now.

“Is that…a _no_?” The Wanderer’s deep velvet voice rang through the stillness of the commons now, and they held out all four hands with palms up, entreating. “Or just a null? I cannot read your silence, my kin. Please tell me your decision…on _that_ part of things…so that I may accept it too. Unless…it is still open to discussion?”

UrZah shook their head and took a couple of calm steps toward them. “We can discuss—‘that part’ from now to the next Conjunction if you wish, bold UrGoh.” (The Seeker wondered whether _bold_ was praise or criticism among this people. It didn’t exactly sound like praise.) “But I doubt what good it would do, given that you miss our meaning as much on this question as on the other. Having the Gelfling act for us would be no less a kind of meddling than acting on our own, and the matter with that…again…is that it is _not our place_ to rush anything along.”

The shaman’s own voice never rose in their reply to UrGoh, but SkekGra was astonished to see a bit of genuine flame leaping up inside those limpid, celestial eyes. And this was the Ritual-Master’s other half, they suddenly remembered. _SkekZok’s_ other half.

SkekZok, whose cruelty was so honed and yet so lacquered over with liturgy that they could stand before you, cut your throat, and sweep majestically out of the room before you realized you were bleeding.

“Perhaps in your long trine away, you have forgotten how closely we divine,” the Ritual-Guardian continued, that flame showing no inclination to expire. “You speak of serving Thra. Each sand-painting I make, each chart and horoscope the Numerologist prepares—what are they for, if not to ask Thra’s will in all we do? Have we not carefully listened to its song, every day, since the sundering?”

They pinned UrGoh with a keen gaze. “No, we don’t say we will never act, my kin. Or that we don’t care about the devastations of the Skeksis. That is not a just accusation. We simply say…we will not act in the absence of a clear sign from Thra.”

From the scattered hums that met this, it seemed to be landing on the other UrRu as a comforting and familiar sagacity. But the Wanderer cast a supremely bewildered look first at the Seeker, then at the Ritual-Guardian.

SkekGra realized what was about to happen a split second in advance by the depth of UrGoh’s breath, but too late. The Wanderer reared halfway upright on their feet and exclaimed at a volume even the Conqueror had only heard from them once or twice—

“A clear sign from Thra is what we just spent _all day describing to you_!”

A group murmur at once began to rise and boil, but the Wanderer rolled on at a near-bellow: “At exactly _what point_ did you—”

 _“UrGoh,”_ SkekGra tried to interrupt in a strangled squeak.

The Mystic didn’t even turn their head, but they gave a quick glance at their Skeksis half and abruptly changed verbal course. “…did you—decide it doesn’t count?”

Well, it was marginally better than the words the Seeker could still feel quaking telepathically in their skull (which were _“…did you stop paying attention”_ ), but the others didn’t seem to be appreciating their kin’s belated restraint.

“Doesn’t _count_?” protested UrIm. Notable, both for their being the first UrRu to risk opening their muzzle other than the Ritual-Guardian or the Master, and for their pleading tone. “UrGoh, that’s not—”

The Wanderer’s head at once swung around to face the Healer’s, not with hostility, but with a very un-Mystical intensity. “Isn’t it, my kin?” they returned. “If this were UrZah’s vision, or the Master’s, would we have even had a forum? Or at least, any forum on _whether_ to obey it, rather than how?”

The village murmur suddenly dropped to almost nothing in volume.

No one had thought about that.

The Seeker hadn’t thought about it, and they _were_ the Wanderer for Thra’s sake. An immediate thunderbolt of shame struck them at their own…meekness. Were they as passive a subservient as any Mystic, that they’d never even thought to ask this? Here was UrGoh, speaking in something so eerily close to the ex-Conqueror’s own pace and cadences that it seemed almost to knock them out of their skin into the raw fleshless air—and yet they couldn’t recognize anything being said. It was being said in their voice and it obviously _belonged_ to them, so they must be saying it, but they did not _know_ it.

“Then why is our vision treated so differently?” the Wanderer demanded. “Because it’s mine? Because it’s SkekGra’s? Because it doesn’t match their divinations, and they’re the only ones to receive Thra’s will? But if they hold all truth, then why must we wall out the world—bury our disputes—watch our doubters drift away—and pretend that is peace?”

The Chanter’s face spasmed as though they’d been struck by something too. “UrGoh. _GraGoh_. You are not helping your case…”

UrGoh didn’t spare them so much as a glance, rounding on the Master now: “And what are you _smiling_ about?”

Incredibly, UrSu _was_ wearing a barely-visible smile as SkekGra turned (in just as much shock as everyone else there) to look at them—but it certainly vanished on the instant.

The Wanderer was merciless. “You think I’m defeating ourself, don’t you, Master? That I am showing myself to be the same monster whose hand I hold? So now your way will prevail, none will ask this terrible thing of you again, and you’re safe?” They made no bodily move towards their old mentor or their old spiritual counselor; but all their subtle energies seemed to fairly charge at the two now, and meanwhile they flung their right hands in the direction of the other petrified onlookers. “Does _either_ of you think you’re still a mystery to anyone here—that they don’t know in their hearts what GraGoh remembers, what you’re so frightened and ashamed of? _Twin shard of SkekZok the Sadist, and of SkekSo the Power-Mad?_ ”

Several of the Mystics cried out. Tears sprang to the Peacemaker’s eyes, and UrIm even stood.

And in this moment, which in their wildest conjectures they’d never imagined, SkekGra at last understood exactly why Thra could only have divided the Skeksis and UrRu as it had. Why it had given the former anger but not honesty, and the latter honesty but not anger.

Skeksis would spit hideous things at each other in a fight and say they were “only stating facts,” but everyone knew it wasn’t so, that such things were said not because they were or weren’t true, but because they hurt—and so when it came time for everyone to start pretending none of it had happened, that wasn’t difficult to do. Mystics were entirely too truthful, but they also couldn’t bear to let a harsh word fly even if somebody’s life depended on it, and that was how _they’d_ managed to live on top of each other for hundreds of trine. Either system preserved the peace, or something close enough to it, in its own way.

But honesty _wed_ to anger could level a way of life to the ground.

Which should be no wonder. It had nearly torn SkekGra and UrGoh apart a second time, after all. It’d arguably torn them apart the first time. Then again, it had also brought them back to each other at long last, and was perhaps the only thing that ever could have. So maybe this was simply an unavoidable gamble, an unskippable step in the process.

Or else the placid Wanderer, this resurrected ancient Explorer—dear Thra, whoever this terrible new voice should be named as—had reclaimed some dark fire that would never be put out, and it was probably the Skeksis’ fault _some_ how, and the Seeker would forever vainly wish that they’d been able to just dismiss that cursed vision as a sickbed dream.

They had no idea which it was.

Both UrSu and UrZah stood frozen with the most wretched expressions on their faces, their heavily-clothed upper bodies wringing out shallow breaths that the Seeker found themselves breathing almost in time with. (What was _any_ of this? How was it that the Skeksis who six unum ago would have cackled gleefully at this whole rustic drama felt consumed by pity, whilst their Mystic put beloved hearts to the sword without blinking an eye?)

Although with that very thought, it did seem as though a slightly different consciousness reappeared behind UrGoh’s eyes, trying to win back space from the wrath that still blazed there. SkekGra thought they could literally hear their other half’s heart thudding blurrily in the space between.

“And the worst of it is, it doesn’t have to continue like this. For you, for anyone,” the Wanderer said at last. They’d fallen back into something…closer to a civilized tone. “You act as though I brought SkekGra here to ask some inconvenient, personal boon of you. It is the opposite. We bring _you_ the boon, which Thra has granted us for the world’s sake, not just our own.”

They tossed their mane in frustration. “Do you realize that we are _fine_ , my kin? That _I_ am fine? I am happier than I’ve been in an Age. And angrier, yes, and sadder, and—scareder…more filled with life and dreams…I am becoming _whole_ again, dear ones. You can too. I came to give you exactly that news: we don’t have to be afraid of our dark halves anymore, or they of us! We don’t all have to—just suffer on. We have another choice that is our absolute right to make, and Thra’s blessing to make it.”

Then UrGoh turned back to the Master, whose eyes still scanned them minutely back and forth, like a prey animal’s (or like a frightened Gelfling’s, when a raging Skeksis countenance was being thrust down into theirs. Not that the Seeker was familiar with such sights). They let go of their grip on SkekGra’s talons and came forward, extending their front arms to UrSu, billowy pale-purple sleeves hanging down and loose fists facing each other—as though they held an invisible chain or rope they meant to rip in two. Which might indeed have been the exact image in the back of the Wanderer’s mind.

“If the Seeker and I did this, anyone might,” they begged. “You are more than strong enough, Master. Don’t you know that even if SkekSo stands right here before you, they _cannot_ steal your soul away?” The Wanderer fought back tears now, as did the Master, who opened their mouth and piteously shook their head but was nonetheless mute. “No— _not_ with the rest of us right here watching and helping you. And don’t you know none of us would deny you that gift? Please. In time we could free all Thra from having to fear you, ever again…to fear your darkness, or ours, or the Empire’s, or the Crystal’s. I know, I know you don’t feel ready yet…I accept that. I only ask that you…think about it.”

The Master took UrGoh’s hand in their own front hands, bowing their head over it, their deep-set eyes almost prayerfully closed.

“My friend,” they said after a long moment, “your heart is a wide and welcoming country. As ever. There is no chance that any of us will escape thinking about this. Of that much, be assured.”

At that UrGoh broke into a tremulous smile, very nearly a laugh, of relief. “Good,” they answered. “I’m grateful. I have faith that you will, even if it takes time, and Master, I—I do know it isn’t only yourself that you fear for.”

“No, it is not.” UrSu sighed. “And to that end, it is now time for you to make _your_ decision, my kin.”


	10. Farewell (Good Evening)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mystics are _very_ Unimpressed...and a familiar face (to some) makes its new appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: Double chapter update! What I'd been calling the "last chapter" was getting much too big--so I, uh, sundered it in two. So now you get Chapters 9 & 10 in tandem. And with that, we bring to a close the Mystic end of this ouch-filled phase of Gra/Goh's life. Hope you've enjoyed. <3
> 
> PS And do stay tuned for the Skeksis end of things at a future date.

The Wanderer’s brows contracted faintly, too confused to register an emotion just yet.

“…My decision…?”

“We can no longer stay here, my friend,” the Master explained, with the kindly patience one would give a childling. “We must leave to find a new dwelling place…most likely tomorrow.”

SkekGra felt their stomach sinking like an anchor to the bottom of the cold ocean.

UrGoh glanced anxiously back at SkekGra, but seeing there was obviously no help there, turned back around. “A new dwelling…? You are—moving the village? But why?”

For answer, the Master looked over UrGoh’s shoulder at the Seeker. UrGoh followed the gaze and their face at once filled up with horror.

“But you—” they began, gaping at UrSu. “You don’t actually think—!”

“We consider it entirely possible,” UrZah confirmed, with a regretful mien that couldn’t quite camouflage the harsh undertone in their voice.

“They’re not going to…bring the other Skeksis against your wishes!” sputtered the Wanderer.

“Why not?” the Master asked very seriously. “After all, you brought one.”

“The one I can _vouch_ for!”

SkekGra was listening closely to their other half’s speaking rhythms now, trying to determine if they were on another pyrotechnic trajectory. If these had all been Skeksis the business would already have come to blows, and the ex-Conqueror’s spine was insisting, however implausibly, that it yet might. They certainly wouldn’t have expected this news to be taken _well_ by UrGoh. The Wanderer of unum past had always been such a disgustingly unflappable creature (both by nature and by virtue of their beloved herbal cornucopia), but that Wanderer sometimes wandered away with little warning these days. They had, as they said…become attached. And honestly, wouldn’t it be rather strange if they’d suddenly found that passion surging in their languid heart for the welfare of all other creatures on Thra, but no rekindling of feelings toward their own—family?

Then again, none of the other Mystics here seemed as detached as advertised, either. Ironically, the Seeker took this as further proof that the division the UrRu viewed as their sad fate was neither absolute nor irrevocable, but that probably wouldn’t mean much in the end here.

“And with all due respect to the Seeker—” the Master was trying to argue now, though their ghostly voice couldn’t get much loft alongside the Wanderer’s soaring indignation.

UrGoh thrust two fingers of their front-left hand in their direction. “ _Stop_ claiming respect you don’t have.”

“…The others may not leave them a choice in the matter,” The Master slowly but doggedly pressed on.

“But—in all these trine, the Skeksis have never once sought you out!” objected the Wanderer.

UrSu nodded. “Exactly.”

UrGoh was brought up short by that. So was SkekGra. It sounded for all the world like the Master thought they’d all just agreed.

“All these trine, and they’ve never once approached us in goodwill,” the Master continued. There was no fear or anger in it, only reported fact. They shook their head, their shaggy mane swaying dreamily, like long prairie grass, with the gesture. “And if they were to approach us in future, it would be anything but.”

“Why would it…?” the Wanderer returned in befuddlement. “Why do you think now that…they’d turn on you?”

UrSol, who had stood up sometime in the last little while, came toward them solemnly, front hands laced together.

In what certainly sounded like real tones of concern and sympathy they said: “If they think we are plotting a reunification, which—please remember, UrGoh—they _did_ crack the very Crystal to prevent. Thra only knows what they might do in the same desperation now.”

SkekGra was boggled enough by this that it finally broke whatever spell had been holding them rigid and shivered them back to life.

“But you’re saying _no_!” they exclaimed. “Why would UrGoh or I tell them different? And anyway, we’re not—insane! Harming you is still harming us! We’re not going to—”

“You did on the day of the sundering,” the Master pointed out.

“That was _one_ of us, and they’re dead!”

“Exactly,” replied the old Mystic with a heavy-lidded stare. The Seeker didn’t know where to begin refuting this—it was mere moments after the division; the Skeksis were so dazed and hurting that _everything_ seemed like a threat; no one had even realized yet about the link between Skeksis and UrRu. Did the UrRu really not understand any of that?

…Though to be fair, it hadn’t occurred to SkekGra till just now that _they’d_ never thought that awful day through from the Mystic perspective either. Or at least, not to consider what Mystics as a group would have come away believing about Skeksis as a group. (They and the Wanderer had compared personal notes—what each individually remembered of the other—but that was a very different conversation.) SkekGra had to suppose the whole thing must have looked, they must all have looked…rather terrifying, to such docile newborns as the UrRu. Perhaps that was the very shadow that still fell over UrSu’s countenance now. What chance would they ever have gotten to form a different impression? It was more remarkable that UrGoh had managed to get past it than that the others hadn’t.

The Master returned their attention to the Wanderer. “UrGoh, listen to me. You do have a choice, but it is a stern one. If you wish, you may leave your Skeksis behind, come with us to whatever place we find to settle.” They gave a shaky sigh. “But—I’m afraid it would have to be the end of your wandering, because we cannot take such risks again. Otherwise…this is farewell.”

UrGoh recoiled, stricken. SkekGra felt it immediately, a squeezing in their own bony chest, an impression of the world steeply tilting on its axis. Even through that disorientation they could see that not one Mystic head was unbowed now—though their sap-bright eyes still followed the scene, drinking it all in, the way the Seeker had seen Gelfling and the other small peoples of Thra do on occasions of…historical importance.

“Consider it carefully tonight,” the Master finished. “In the morning we will hear your wishes one way or the other.”

Somehow the Seeker managed to unstick the soles of their sandals from the ground and make their way over to the group. They had no idea what to do when they got there, however, except to put a hand on the Wanderer’s shoulder, which felt so pathetically, idiotically unequal to the whole thing. The Wanderer actually started briefly at the touch, but dropped their suddenly-tensed arm when they saw who it was.

“Tonight…is all?” was all UrGoh could say through a thickening throat. “So quickly, and you call _me_ impatient?”

The Ritual-Guardian and the Master said nothing. They didn’t even look at each other. There wasn’t even a question.

“But then, but if you _really_ think the Skeksis would do such a thing, then—we must take SkekGra with us!” The Wanderer gestured in a helpless arc at the Seeker. Urgency was beginning to overtake disbelief once again. They were begging even more desperately than before, if that was possible. “For my sake if nothing else—since their death would be mine too! You can’t just…just leave them here to the mercy of…”

“The mercy of the Skeksis you say can save Thra?”

Sweet-faced UrMa had come to UrIm’s side now; and no more Peacemaker was there to be seen at all. They regarded UrGoh— _one of their best friends among the Mystics!_ SkekGra recalled—as though they weren’t just a stranger, but possibly a foe as well. “No. We have seen more than enough of what a Skeksis’ presence does here, the _further_ division and strife they’ve sown.”

The Seeker protested, “But I’m not dividing you—you are!”

It had come out far too squawking and carping. They swallowed hard around a dry lump. “Don’t you think I know you’re UrGoh’s people? I can’t wish you ill. I wouldn’t try to sow—”

“Do not _dare_ stand before us with the blood of thousands on your claws and tell us what you would not do,” UrMa fired back. They were _shaking_.

It wasn’t the inarguable justice of the words that thundered into SkekGra like the suns’ malediction and at last declared the entire question dead in their heart. (After all, the talons of UrMa’s own dark half weren’t clean either, though maybe that was precisely the problem.) It was the sheer, undiluted venom in the Mystic’s eyes. Such hate, from beings who didn’t otherwise know the meaning of the word.

They were not going to listen. They simply weren’t. None of them were.

The Seeker drew themselves up. Their tongue had turned to some especially gravelly kind of clay, but they spoke quite calmly regardless.

“Go, UrGoh. You’d better.”

The Wanderer’s response was instant. Their head and gaze snapped up to their dark half and they fairly growled it: “ _NO_. I will not abandon you.”

“UrGoh!” The Seeker grimaced at the Master. “—Uh, could you excuse us a moment, Master UrSu?”

“Of course,” the Master nodded.

UrGoh was Skeksis-stubborn, blast them. _“No!”_

The Seeker tried to tug at them, to no avail. Skeksis-stubborn _and_ tree-rooted. (In an unarmed combat between them, it was all too possible the Mystic’s heavy arms and torso could have carried the day in spite of everything. Staggering, but true.) “Come on—one private Grotting word!”

“I need no more words, Seeker,” decreed the Wanderer. “I’m _not_ leaving you behind.”

“And I’m _not_ taking your kin away from you!” SkekGra snarled.

“You aren’t.” The UrRu’s eyes were such deep wells, and carrying so many waters at once, grief, fury, love—how in Thra did they do it? “This is our matter. They, and I, are choosing this.”

“Please, my other shard. Just give it tonight.” The Seeker tried one more time, taking the significant step of bending their lanky frame and war-painted face partway to their light half’s level in supplication. “You might never see them again, and if you don’t, then how can we hope _anyway_ to—”

“And where will you go?” UrGoh broke in irritably, as though SkekGra had said something very stupid indeed.

“I don’t know!”

_“Where?”_

_“Somewhere!”_ cried the Seeker in anguish.

Well, that wasn’t a very compelling argument, was it? They blustered and gesticulated, trying to think of anything remotely better. “I…can lay low.”

“All alone?” persisted the Wanderer.

At that SkekGra felt they were no longer the only one being ridiculous. Had UrGoh so quickly forgotten the world-striding Conqueror? “I can take care of myself, I always have.”

“And sundered from each other again? Forever, this time?” The Wanderer now fixed them with a gaze that was somehow both endlessly tender and utterly pitiless. “Can you…do that?”

No, they couldn’t.

The Seeker tried mightily to make some kind of noise before their own silence answered for them, but failed.

“I can’t,” said UrGoh quietly, and then repeated it at higher volume for all the gathering: “I—just can’t.”

They stared up at the Seeker. “We are one, SkekGra. I abandon you, I abandon Thra, I abandon our true self.”

Then they turned back to their fellow Mystics. “And it is the same for you,” they added, subdued. “It doesn’t matter how far you run from me…from us. UrRu and Skeksis are _still_ one. Deny it all you like…but it will never stop being true. This changes nothing.”

Their gaze at last landed on the Master, who met it with, “It sounds as though your decision is made, old friend.”

“Yes, it is,” the Wanderer replied. They reached for the Seeker’s talons. “Come, we should pack up.”

This had all happened so—quickly for SkekGra that they couldn’t even spin their thoughts around to try to catch up with their light half’s. Certainly not to the packing part already. “Do we have to? Couldn’t we stay just the one night?”

The Ritual-Guardian leaned their staff slightly forward, a formal gesture and ruling. “Yes, you may. But that’s all.”

“No. I have no wish to further disturb their…peace.” There was no sneer on the Wanderer’s lips or in their words (they were almost never _bitter_ ), but going by the sepulchral reverberation in its wake, this still fell on the assembled as much the same kind of doom-oracle that the assembled had just laid on them. “May they find it quickly again.”

The Healer moved, with surprising dexterity for a Mystic, to intercept the Wanderer and catch at their retreating sleeve. “UrGoh—”

At once apologetic, they dropped their hand before the ruthless words UrGoh was clearly readying could emerge. “—I know, you have to pack. But please…will you let those who wish to come and say goodbye to you…and…” They glanced awkwardly, furtively at the Seeker. “…you?”

The rapidity of UrGoh’s thaw into almost completely their ordinary manner was terrible to watch. They _so_ didn’t want any of this. Neither did UrIm. None of them did. It was just happening anyway.

“Of course, my kin,” said the Wanderer, with only the barest quaver in their voice.

* * *

As hideously wrong as everything had now gone, there were some points on which the Wise Ones remained wise, especially compared to Skeksis or even Gelfling. They didn’t crowd into UrGoh’s (and SkekGra’s) quarters. They didn’t gawk around at the clear evidence of light and dark halves sleeping in company and sharing laundry. They didn’t make foolish assurances that things would be fine, or that the angry words that had clearly been deliberate weren’t, or that they’d see each other again soon.

They did come in ones, twos, and a single threesome—UrIm and UrSol all but dragging in a teary UrMa to mumble some bedraggled well-wishes, which the Wanderer received with kindly grace. ( _They_ would not look at SkekGra, but UrSol and UrIm bowed to the Seeker, and UrIm even took their hands and said some kind of blessing in their strange liturgical tongue, which threw the Skeksis into a perfect confusion of vaguely-stirred emotions and crawling skin.)

They also brought gifts, clearly very hastily gotten together, but heartfelt nonetheless. Poor UrUtt hugged UrGoh wordlessly for a long time, then gave them some of the plain but sinew-strong thread they made for the ancient Mystic coats and harnesses, and a few lengths of nubby cloth that was startlingly cozy for all its humble coarseness, and a bit of deep-pile velvet in a beautiful golden blush that was cozier yet. UrYod had two scrolls, ornately and occultly sealed by UrAc, that they said UrGoh would know when to open. Healing herbs and smoking leaf from UrNol, tonics from UrIm, some kind of dried-fruit trail rations from UrAmaj (yecch). UrSen had made a prayer-stick that looked like a peasant child’s improvised toy to SkekGra, but that the Wanderer for whatever reason found immensely touching. UrZah brought a carefully-wrapped glass ball that they described simply as “memories.” UrTih gave them a tiny jar of what the Skeksis remnant of GraGoh could cautiously identify as seed-stones needed for basic alchemical conjugations, and said something dryly mysterious about how they’d serve “better than nothing” for forging sun-steels, as well.

“I notice UrMa and UrSol didn’t bring you anything,” the Seeker acidly observed.

“I suppose you would,” was UrGoh’s laconic reply. Apparently they hadn’t noticed. SkekGra snorted.

“Yes, sorry, I notice things. No wonder on the first, but I’d thought a _bit_ better of the second. That will teach me, I guess.”

Last of all came the Master. UrRu were such a Grotting muddle—if one said something cruel to a _Skeksis_ , they’d either try to put on a mask of unconcern and hide it completely (saving it for vengeance-fuel down the road), or else shriek to put screechrats to shame. Nothing in between. So what this nonsense was of silent tears pouring down Mystic snouts like ice melts down a mountainside, only Thra could know; but whatever it was, it had the both of them. Though no Lord of the Crystal could ever successfully fade into the walls, SkekGra did turn away and pretend to be intensely focused on fitting presents into bags and rolling up the bedding as tightly as possible.

“I don’t hate you,” they finally heard UrGoh say after an eternity.

“I know,” the Master answered, and hesitated. “Part of me does long to follow you into this…bold new experiment. I never thought I could be even further divided against myself, but here we are.”

“I know.” An indrawn breath. “A time will come, Master…I’m sure of it. When…Thra will call you…in a way even you…cannot doubt.”

A sad chuckle which the Seeker thought was UrSu’s, but couldn’t be sure of.

“And when it does…you’ll answer,” insisted the Wanderer.

“May it be so, dear friend.”

“I only ask…when that time comes, that you…remember me.”

“I could not forget you.”

Some kind of rummaging noises, a sob unmistakably in UrGoh’s oceanic register, and another soundless eternity. At last SkekGra heard the door close, and they turned around to see the Wanderer carrying a small box over, dabbing their eyes on a spare shirt cuff.

“Another gift?” inquired the Seeker a bit coolly. “What is it?”

All these tokens of affection were starting to baffle and anger them. UrGoh seemed to have already forgiven their kin a heart-wound that SkekGra fully planned to carry to the Great Conjunction on their behalf. Now they were supposed to be fobbed off with trinkets and mealy-mouthed words? What kind of fool did everyone take the shards of GraGoh for?

UrGoh opened the box, letting a few stray blades of straw fall, and took the contents out to show the Seeker: a lump of brown glazed ceramic that looked _meant_ to be a cup, but would have been more convincing as a ball of phegnese dung.

SkekGra relished the badly-needed opportunity to cover something with scorn. “That’s got to be one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.”

The Wanderer choked out another little sob and made another deeply futile dab.

“Yes,” they said with a rueful smile. “It is.”

Mystics.

On the very last go through the checklist—the Conqueror _always_ had a packing list—of the bags and the room and the new small travois (which they’d had to add not just because of the gifts, but also because of the handful of possessions from UrGoh’s quarters that they wanted to take into exile), SkekGra found an unfamiliar roll of old battered bark paper surreptitiously stuffed into the top of one of their drawstring bags. They opened it up, and were still trying to make heads or tails of the diagrams on it, when a long head bunted impudently up under their elbow and squeezed in to take a look.

“Sleeping-frame,” the Wanderer explained curtly after a moment’s examination.

“Eh?”

“Sleeping-frame plans. Since we can’t take…mine with us.” They sighed. “That would be UrMa…they…make most of…the furniture.”

“There’s a short note here, too. Do you want—”

“No. Not…yet.”

“Right.”

The Seeker privately resolved to read it later themselves, of course. Depending on what it said, maybe it’d be good for a cheer-up for the Wanderer later. Or for a good solid fuming on the Seeker’s part. Either would suit.

* * *

For once SkekGra didn’t push to make time on the road, even though there was a fair chance that having set out this late, darkness and exhaustion would consign them to a fireless, cheerless, sleepless night’s camp in some pitiful spot. They weren’t feeling much spring in their own step, and UrGoh might as well have been sweetsap trying to roll uphill.

Not long after they’d hauled themselves back across the creek on the hand ferry (watching the standing stones slowly vanish into thin air, along with all trace of Mystic habitation or Mystics), the Speaker finally broke the silence.

“I guess we _should_ have started with UrSan instead. Or tried to find UrLii. —Grot, even _Skek_ Li or SkekSa might have gone better. Anyway, one of those four should probably be our next try. They don’t give a Swothel-squirt if they rile the others up, they don’t have to live with anybody afterward, the way the folk at the village or the Castle do. Yes, seems a much more promising path in that light.”

“Perhaps,” grunted the Wanderer.

“I’d say Ur-whatsit as well, I mean your Archer…it was UrVa, yes? Except their other half is just— _such_ a piece of work. If I’m an abomination, I don’t even know how you’d describe them. They always were something of a crack-brain, and with the passing trine…”

They clicked their tongue in mild derision. “The _UrRu_ half certainly has skills that could come in handy though, even if they said _Grot, no_ to reuniting. Say, didn’t UrTih tell you the village would probably be sending word of where they end up to UrVa, because UrVa sort of informally carries the mail, I mean to the extent that there’s mail? Or whatever you Mystics use?”

“Yes,” UrGoh assented. “They are…a gifted tracker, and traverse…all of Thra. They can find… _almost_ anything.”

“Well. That matches up with their—Skek, all right. I hope they have the old nut screwed on a bit tighter. They seemed to. Do they? What do you say, worth a try?”

“Perhaps.”

The Seeker was beginning to take _perhaps_ as some kind of subtle ruminant-style brushoff. Their feathers ruffled. “Listen, I’m just trying to think ahead, forge ahead. We have to keep moving. What else is there to do? This is the beginning of the campaign, not the end! Don’t give up.”

“I haven’t,” answered the Mystic, very quietly.

“There’s also your magic, right? Some way to make contact in an emergency? The Numerologist heavily implied there was, and…”

Seeing that the space beside them was suddenly empty, they turned to find UrGoh no longer even trudging, but just standing there stock-still in the middle of the road.

 _Grot take us, what now._ “UrGoh?”

UrGoh tilted their head. “Shh…”

“What?”

“UrSol’s gift,” the Wanderer murmured.

“UrSol didn’t—” SkekGra belatedly perked up.

Light and low, just a humming really; yet once they were actively listening, it was as if the Chanter stood right there at the Seeker’s ear. The melody was a modest, playful one that tumbled lazily in the air like a windsifter. Somehow SkekGra knew there _were_ words to it, though they had the disappointing feeling they couldn’t have pronounced them even if they remembered them. Something about an old myth, nine flying creatures who soared as high as they could thinking that the moons were the eyes of their mother, and of course they turned out to be entirely correct…? A song for the very young, they thought—ah, but naturally it was. Even the Chanter might have some trouble with elder UrSkek music, and there was no way the Wanderer (to say nothing of the Seeker, for Thra’s sake) could have managed something more complex than this little bauble.

“It’s the song!” they reminded the Wanderer excitedly, plucking at the Mystic’s broad shirt collar. “The song I asked them for! It’s UrSkek, isn’t it? You’re right, it _is_ their gift—we have to memorize it!”

“I am,” said UrGoh a touch crisply. “Trying to.”

“Oh. Oh, sorry.”

The two of them stayed there, straining their hearing to the utmost for three rounds through of the tune, and then UrGoh began walking again. SkekGra wasn’t sure they quite had it yet, however, and kept on listening as they went.

“And to think I’d marked them down for as much of a fraud as the Chamberlain,” they commented after a while, rather gratified. “Quite a pair of lungs in your kin, there. They probably _could_ sing a message to us from anywhere in Thra.”

“Yes. And…hear one, too. _With_ the proper…ritual. My power is not as theirs.”

“You don’t sound as pleased about it as I—as _I_ thought you’d be,” frowned SkekGra.

“Not sure…how much it’ll…matter.”

The Seeker blinked in frustration. “Well. And we probably _won’t_ know for a while, although SkekSil’s not the only one whose memories we might jog with that tune. Besides, it does mean UrSol still has more sympathy for the, ah, the mission, than they were letting on?” SkekGra hadn’t been calling it _the mission_ out loud in case UrGoh took offense at the warlike metaphor; but lately they’d begun to feel it was as good a word as any, for something every bit as dangerous as the tasks they’d performed for the Empire.

The Wanderer just shook their head. “Again…not sure how much…it matters. If they won’t ever…let on. When we…most needed them to.”

The Seeker mentally ran through and discarded several reasons they might have given as to why their light half should go on hoping. Weren’t they supposed to be the jaded cynic around here? But then, they’d always been titanically stubborn too (a fortunate trait in a Conqueror, if nowhere else), and come to think of it, maybe stubbornness was its own kind of hope. Certainly they weren’t _about_ to concede defeat. If the obstacles had gotten taller, they’d just have to leap higher somehow. And fair was fair. UrGoh had often been the one pushing on the importance of the vision and the need to concretely act on it. SkekGra supposed they could take their turn now.

Then the telltale sound of sniffles began.

“…Oh Thra, not this again.” The Seeker shot their Mystic a dreading sidewise look. At least UrGoh had rediscovered their pocket handkerchief and was no longer spotting their sleeves, but that didn’t help untangle the skittering little yarn-ball of anxiety that at once took up residence in the Seeker’s gizzard. How did anyone ever watch such a distasteful and—terrifying sight? At least, when it wasn’t one’s prisoners of war and their subjugated families, which was a totally different matter?

“Please, not now, UrGoh. My patience is thin. It’s getting dark, _I’m_ trying to keep a lookout”—a patently obvious lie, but it sprang right out—“because there could be Ruffnaws around here, or even Rakkida and exactly _what_ am I supposed to do when you start that up??”

The Wanderer just chuckled through their tears, another blur of affects that made no sense whatever to the Skeksis mind. _Honestly._

“You will…know better…in time,” UrGoh told them. The words were oddly tranquil despite their upsetting accompaniment. “For now…you can just…touch my shoulder…or hand…and look at me. —Just as you _have_ been,” they added at the Seeker’s look of incomprehension.

“Yeah, but…I mean.”

“It will suffice, SkekGra.”

“Will it?” Truthfully, the Seeker didn’t even want to do that much, not while all this wretchedness was going on, but they did feel damnably responsible for doing _something_. In some awful way, they now knew these to be their own tears too; so it now seemed craven, some dereliction of duty, to let their other half carry it all unaided.

They gracelessly patted the thick-coated shoulder, then waited for any perceptible change in affairs.

“Like that?”

“Yes,” came the Mystic’s deep-rolling reassurance. It sounded calm enough. Yet there they were dabbing again.

“Well. I don’t see how it made any difference. But fine.”

“It did.” The Wanderer’s answering glance was still far too damp in SkekGra’s estimation. But perhaps it had become a bit less forlorn, after all. “And thank you.”

“I was arrogant,” said the Wanderer a while later, apropos of nothing. The Skeksis was glad to see their companion volunteering a conversation, but unenamored of the subject. It seemed too likely to end in more leaking eye sockets.

They scoffed back. “ _Arrogant._ Old UrZah’s favorite word. I could die happy never hearing it again.”

UrGoh gave SkekGra a minor warning look. “UrZah…” they began.

They rumbled in hesitation before going on, as interminably slowly as ever. That strange burst of energy from back at the village seemed long gone, to say nothing of the incandescent and…really rather magnificent outrage that had fed it.

“Didn’t have… _nearly_ enough time…to prepare…a new memory-glass…for me. The one…they gave us? Was their own. They’ve probably been filling it…since near the beginning. They wanted me to have…all I still can, of my kin.”

“’All you still can!’ And whose fault is that! Other than mine of course.”

“No…not your fault,” demurred UrGoh.

“Don’t be absurd. I’m the one they hate.”

“No…” The Wanderer gave them a very Mystic half-smile, one that was far more tragedy than comedy. “ _Their_ dark halves…are the ones they hate.”

SkekGra opened their beak, then shut it again. “Fine. Fair. —And what could you have possibly done about that?”

UrGoh’s neck was bent in rigorous examination of the gravel their dragging toes scattered forward. “Be…less arrogant…?”

“Demanding respect isn’t ‘arrogant,’ it’s your due!” trilled the Skeksis. “You aren’t less an UrRu, less a shard of the Twice-Nine than they are. You were _right_ about that, UrGoh. I didn’t even recognize how right you were till you pointed it out!”

The UrRu didn’t look up, though they did emit a chuff that sounded almost grateful. “I…suppose. But…”

“But nothing! Stop it! Ugghh, you Mystics and your constant self-punishment!”

 _“But…”_ Stubbornness had clearly been part of the inheritance from old GraGoh-that-was for both their halves. “Right or wrong…they did not listen…in part, because of that…insult.”

“Then they were never going to listen, UrGoh—to listen they’d have firstly needed to think of you as a real equal, and secondly, been willing to accept the truth even when it hurt.”

“…Fair,” admitted the Wanderer.

“They’re just not ready, you said so yourself. I would never have been either, without the vision. Somehow we have to figure out what can…shake them up but in the _right_ way. The way Thra did for you and me.” They snorted. “Logic isn’t penetrating, so it’s going to have to bypass the head _and_ heart and go straight for the guts.”

UrGoh winced.

“I meant that figuratively! Emotionally! Thra, give me patience!”

They were coming back under forest canopy now, out of the relatively flat country that had bordered the ferry, and the nutwood leaves blotted out most of the moonslight. At least the path they were now on was a broader one in much more regular use (it seemed to see a lot of farmers’ carts, from the ruts in it), and once their eyes had adjusted, the slight luminescence of the mosses draped on the lower branches helped show out the bumps and pits. There was something in the smell of them that did remind the Seeker of the catacombs under the Castle, but that didn’t bother them much. Their kind had been the unquestioned masters of those tunnels for many trine—the Arathim long since driven into even remoter holes too dank for even the Conqueror to want to explore.

The Wanderer fell quiet again for a good while. SkekGra started trying to hum UrSol’s tune, figuring it would either be needed practice for them, or an annoyance for UrGoh that might prod them out of whatever brown study they were spiraling into again over there.

“And…the Skeksis?” the Mystic inquired soon after, whether by coincidence or not.

“I don’t want to so much as _think_ about the Skeksis,” grumbled the Seeker. “If even the Mystics are blinded by pride—! But I’d still say…should we get a chance to catch one of them outside the Castle…then maybe. Occasionally SkekEkt gets sent off for an errand, and I think we could very profitably ambush them with UrUtt, but that's—probably moot now, because UrUtt doesn't travel much, do they? And SkekTek barely leaves the lab either. So better SkekOk, I think. They might even undertake the debate as a scholarly theoretical to start with. Or SkekShod! Why do I keep forgetting _them_ , like a dunce? They can barely manage a full sentence, not exactly what one likes in a diplomat, but…”

Now SkekGra winced, thinking of how that infirmity had come to be. On the other hand, they doubted there was any love lost between the Treasurer and the Emperor on account of it. That could be an opening, albeit a somewhat chancy one. UrGoh gave them a curious look, which they didn’t respond to.

“Well anyway, the point is, maybe. I could flip a coin and be content right now, frankly. But that’s not terribly strategic. Let me sleep on it?”

“Of course.” As though the Wanderer would say anything else, although they were plainly cogitating themselves. “We will discuss it, tomorrow…and I can show you where…our other wanderers tend to be…at this season.”

“There you go. See, there’s always tomorrow.”

* * *

Then SkekGra peered ahead along the road. “Wait here a moment, I want to check on something.”

UrGoh lifted their head to an inquisitive angle. When SkekGra ended a sentence, it was generally with either a vehemently downward or a vehemently upward intonation. It was not their habit to slowly trail off toward a mumble. “Something…?”

“Yeah. And uh, get off the road a bit too. Somewhere off that way, maybe.” One of their tiny back arms waved vaguely to the left. “I’ll come find you.”

If the Seeker had had any idea how _very_ much like a Katyaken spying for judflies they looked right now, with their head popping up, then down, then sideways in various rotations, they’d probably never have done it—at least not at that speed. But being in blissful ignorance on this point, they left the Wanderer to privately enjoy the spectacle as they strode hither and yon in a few different directions, listening, frowning, and sniffing.

“Is something…coming?” asked the Mystic softly. SkekGra turned distractedly back toward them.

“Oh, you’re still here. Not that I can—hear now. But go on, get off the road.”

UrRu could hear just as keenly as Skeksis, at least when their drooping ears were free of muffling headgear such as the hat-flaps UrGoh now moved aside so they could listen too. And certainly there were things to hear in the environs. The sweet song of the riddits and Noggies, primarily, but also wind in branches, and the crawling of something in the ground-brush that sounded to be roughly the size of a teberfroc. Nothing the Wanderer wasn’t perfectly used to hearing in this stretch of woods at night.

Skeksis _noses_ , on the other hand, were more finely tuned than those of any other upright-walking creature of Thra, so they tried again with, “Do you…smell something?”

“Well, yes. Fizzgig blood.” The Skeksis inhaled. “Lots of it.”

The Mystic hummed dismay, their stomach turning very slightly at the mental image. “Oh. Poor thing…” A string of questions unspooled in their head, far faster than they could ever have said them aloud: SkekGra didn’t want them to see a bleeding Fizzgig…? _Unlikely. They’re not THAT overprotective._ SkekGra was afraid of a bleeding Fizzgig? _No, don’t be ridiculous._ SkekGra wanted to go _eat_ the Fizzgig? _For Thra’s sake, Wanderer._ Well, but they might.

“You fear…whatever…wounded it?” UrGoh tentatively inquired. That too seemed unlikely—none of the natural predators of Fizzgigs would attack a Skeksis or a Mystic, and certainly not both together—but they could think of nothing else.

At that the Seeker shook themselves out and stared at their twin shard. “What?” they returned, in a more muted version of their irritated squawk than UrGoh had thought physically possible. “No! It’s not the—it’s—” They flapped their claws at their UrRu and then pointed imperiously in the direction of _somewhere off that way_. “Just trust me! That’s more than one Fizzgig’s worth, first off. _And_ Fizzgig blood is one of the few things reeksome enough to hide the scent of a Skeksis from another Sk—"

Their head and neck suddenly tilted up toward the unseen stars, as though yanked by some invisible cord, and swiftly back down in a straight line to meet UrGoh’s gaze with an open-beak look of horror.

A series of events then occurred with a rapidity any UrRu would have difficulty absorbing. The smell seemed to slightly outpace everything else: spoiled, cloying, clotted, overwhelming. They had the impression of something like giant black Awlis wings descending behind them and enfolding them, and then they weren’t wings at all but an iron-hard, black-clad arm and thin, but crushingly powerful talons wrapped around their front arms, while their back arms were half-pinned on either side by what felt like the creature’s thighs. They tried instinctively to rear upright in hopes of shaking whatever it was off, but an instant later came the unmistakable, cruel cold of a blade laid against their neck and a—Rakkida skull? Maybe, hard to see in the corner of one’s eye, something white and bony at any rate—pressed up to their left cheek.

 _This thing is a_ sentient _? Weapon user?_ was the only and perfectly useless thought they managed to register before speech started leaping out of that skull on hot, rank breath. “Ah-ah, wouldn’t do that if I was you. Or that…” Something, either a leg or a tail, brutally knocked the staff out of their hind-right hand and off to the side.

The Conqueror _(no, the Seeker)_ was in a full Skeksis threat-posture now, spines and feathers brindling, tongue flexing, talons rigidly curled, and tail lashing left and right as if exhorting the rest of the wiry body to _get on with it, move, or I'm going without you!_

“Evening, SkekGra,” the creature behind UrGoh said imperturbably, though in a voice so low and gnarled it would have been hard to read anything beyond cool malice in it in any case.

“SkekMal,” snarled the Seeker. “Did _you_ Grotting pick the wrong target—”

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” the other jeered, and dug the edge of the blade into the Wanderer’s thick skin. Beasts. This was a contest of beasts. The Wanderer was just lucklessly situated within it.

And the thing that clutched them was really a Skeksis? Like the Seeker, but with a face of literal rather than figurative bone? The two rasped at each other in the same poisonous registers and yet felt nothing alike otherwise.

SkekMal, as the Seeker had dubbed them, hissed in satisfaction. “This one’s yours, isn’t it? Yes, it is. Been watching more than long enough to see. And the fearsome Conqueror caught without a single weapon to hand? Tsk-tsk. Not _me_ with the cracked brain. Not one talon toward that staff, milord. Don’t be insulting.”

SkekGra gave another snarl. Still, the Wanderer could see them thinking at Armalig speed behind those crimson eyes. They were transparently sorry not to have the staff, or anything else, in hand, but they also understood how little good any of those things might have been in this circumstance. The terrain was…unfavorable.

“So what are we doing here, Conqueror?” prompted the other Skeksis.

The Seeker’s gaze landed on UrGoh’s distressed face and quickly moved off again, to study SkekMal’s with a bit more seeming composure. “Well, you have my attention now—why don’t you tell me? If it’s some new game to while away your eternal boredom, it’s in poor taste.”

A throaty chuckle erupted beside the Mystic’s ear. “No games, Conqueror. Wish it was, but I’m here on official business.”

Whatever _official business_ was, the Wanderer did not like how much pleasure it apparently gave SkekMal to say it.

“Official business…?” SkekGra retorted, squinting menacingly. “I am not your prey, Hunter. Nor are the Mystics. You know the law!”

“Don’t worry. No prey this time.” The death’s head turned toward UrGoh and sniffed. A long, deep sniff. “Just a parcel I was asked very nicely to fetch back to the Castle. Double parcel, it turns out.”

“Oh, is _that_ all? Then why this nonsense with slathering yourself in filth and making me jump half out of my skin? Idiot.”

Both the Hunter and the Wanderer boggled for a moment at the Seeker, who had delivered this in an unexpectedly credible facsimile of offhanded indignation. Then the Hunter seemed to recover and once more tightened their grip on the Mystic—who felt almost glad of it, being unsure how much longer their knees could hold up under the shock.

“You’re not tryin’ to tell me you’re headed back yourself?” they sneered. “That would be the opposite direction, milord.”

“No, I wasn’t planning to just yet, but it’s of no matter. If the Emperor summons, then I gladly go, as I _always have_. None of this brigandry was necessary.”

SkekMal barked a laugh. “‘Brigandry!’ Oh, my mistake! I can see now, you’re just burblin’ to tell our Serene High and Mightiness why you’ve been missing from your army for three unum and why I find you _skulkin’ about the forest, unarmed, with your own stinking Mystic slug._ Yes, I’m sure the Conqueror’s got a perfect Grotting explanation for that.”

“I Grotting well do,” said the Seeker in a lofty tone, standing up quite straight with a puffed ruff and chest. “But it’s not for your ears. Let’s just go.”

“Fine. I’m only here to fetch and carry. You heard milord,” the Hunter said very cheerfully to UrGoh, “let’s be off.”

They casually altered the angle of the knife, forcing UrGoh’s head up and to the side so that it was under the UrRu’s chin, pointed up into their jaw, painfully close to breaking skin. That freed their other front arm to pull out a length of rope that they evidently had mounted on their back somewhere, and they tossed it in the Seeker’s direction. “You can do the honors. Tie their hands together, no funny knots, I’ll test ‘em.”

SkekGra froze for a brief but telling moment. “What, you’re bringing _them_ along?” they complained. “Why? You know that’s not going to sit well with the other—”

“The other slugs you was just paying a social call to? Why not? Can’t we return the hospitality?” They chortled. “Just makin’ sure I fulfill my task, Conqueror. No disrespect meant.”

The Wanderer dearly hoped that the fear in the Seeker’s eyes as they obeyed and lashed each pair of Mystic hands together was only obvious to their light half. Not that UrGoh honestly thought the Hunter had been fooled; however, there _was_ some sort of strange balancing of aggression and testing going on here. Some reason why SkekMal—who UrGoh now saw was only wearing a _mask_ made out of a skull, information which somehow made them more scary, not less—didn’t feel at liberty to fully abuse their leverage yet. UrGoh did not want that balance to change in SkekMal’s favor. They tried to convey with their own gaze a message of _I’m fine, don’t fear for me, I see what you’re trying to do, I trust you, do as you must_ , but had no idea whether SkekGra was receiving it.

“That’ll do,” SkekMal declared, after checking and twisting the knotted rope loops so viciously the Wanderer was sure they’d raised bruises. “You’d better take the travois over, Conqueror. Not that far to go, but I don’t like to wear out a steed.”

Then they took the length that was left in their hand and _jumped_ onto UrGoh’s back, as though they were riding a phegnese.

The Wanderer let loose an involuntary groan and half-buckled. The Skeksis was even heavier than they looked. But if there was one thing UrRu were good at, it was bearing burdens, and they did not collapse. Or protest. Or even take it especially personally.

The Seeker’s noise of displeasure was significantly louder, however. They contorted alarmingly, then labored to force themselves back to a semi-normal stance, all while sending a look of pure murder to their fellow Skeksis. They could probably see, possibly even feel, the knife’s point pressing down between UrGoh’s shoulder blades—the continuing assurance of good conduct.

“Lead the way, Conqueror,” called the Hunter, who was now in positively capital humor. Evidently they considered this a very successful hunt indeed. “Like you always have! Back the way you came to the crossroads, then right.”

The Seeker didn’t reply, letting their disdainful carriage speak for itself. As they set out, UrGoh thought of their poor staff, getting colder and damper back among the trees, and that they grieved a little for. They’d had it for over two hundred trine, with occasional refurbishing. If they’d known what was about to happen, they would have thrust it upright into the ground, the way they did whenever they bedded down for a night outdoors. It wouldn’t have been able to confer its blessing and protection on its increasingly distant owner anymore (dear Thra, would anything now?)…but it could have stayed there, singing in the deep woods, bringing a modicum of healing and peace to all living things passing through. It would at least have been a _welcome_ gift, and one unquestionably in their power to give this world, on their own say-so, at their choosing.

That was the one thing in all the realms of the Crystal that they most desired at this moment. And they prayed feverishly for it, under their breath—hoping against hope that Thra, the three suns, and the three moons had not abandoned them and SkekGra _just_ yet, despite all their failures.

That they would somehow still be granted that chance.

**Author's Note:**

> NB: My canon knowledge is from the movie, the TV series, *World of the Dark Crystal*, *Creation Myths*, and setting-description companion books. I haven't yet read the other fictional works. So I am having to blithely make up some shit, particularly about the mysterious UrRu and their customs and all. If I'm in conflict with canon somewhere, please feel free to let me know so I can fix if possible!


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